What is THE RED in NANA?

“Mama Earth. Nana Buruku. The great African goddess who gave birth to the universe and the moon and the sun. You think she gets angry? You think she gets fucking… furious with us?”

The script for NANA states that when THE BOY taps his cane and attacks, that: “the world goes RED.

This is effectively a pulsing, moving cloud of bloody colour on the screen A localised storm that visually acts very much like a murmuration of starlings. It covers the gruesome attacks which allows us to frighten the shit out of people with what they DON’T see. Very much the Jaws maxim. And within that we can subliminally flash images of feral teeth, tearing, rending.

“Screams. Human screams. Ripping sounds. Someone is being eaten alive.

The attacks are sensory, psychedelic flashes. Filling the cinema screen. They are NOT intended to be CGI extravaganzas and therefore, should be relatively inexpensive to film.

The only time we actually see what’s in the cloud in the script is in the finale’s reveal, and the fatal attack on Cooper. That is where we show that the RED is actually the spirit of the natural world itself. This would be where CGI would be used as we have visions of all kinds of animals visible within the Red Cloud, as it whirls around Cooper like a hurricane.

The RED is ultimately the Gaia theory, and the core of the film’s central idea. That the natural world has had enough of man causing it pain and is here for revenge upon us.