2018 short film directed by Michael Gil which is about kids being kidnapped or murdered.
Exclusively using archival news footage, this film looks at how the media has created a stranger danger movement and whether this is a good thing or bad.
Those who were alive from the 60s to the 80s are quite familiar with “stranger danger”. It was used in a series of PSAs during those decades. They were to warn parents about the dangers their kids were in when it came to strangers. Kids could be kidnapped or murdered by strangers.
Gil patches a bunch of these along with new reports from the era. There is no narration. This is effective. Really makes you focus in on the images and what is being said during the news reports. The filmmaker is not trying to warn parents, rather he is showing how the media contributed to the frenzy at the time. How they used scare tactics to entrap the masses into watching what they produced. How the media was just stirring the pot at a time in which crime rates were decreasing. To what end? Just for ratings?