When Polyvinyl, the six-piece alternative indie band from the North East of England, released Bad Dreams in April, they were already presenting it as a song about the “willful art of forgetting”. A few months later, the official music video picks up that idea and brings it into the wider story of Where This Ends.
The video, the fourth chapter in the band’s self-produced five-part short film, takes place in a surreal setting: blue lights, blurred images and large sheets of translucent plastic. Everything feels close and, at the same time, out of reach, which fits perfectly with lyrics where what was once a relationship slowly becomes a memory, an apparition… a bad dream.
There are details that really nail the idea, like the two hands separated by a transparent surface, turning “let go of my hand” into an image without needing to spell it out. Meanwhile, Annabelle moves through the space disoriented, as if she were still trapped in the memory she is trying to escape.
What works best is how the video makes that emotional distance visible: the memory is still there, almost within reach, but separated by a barrier that can no longer be crossed.
That is the feeling the video leaves you with: someone who is still there, just not in the same way. Maybe that is what it captures best: the moment when someone is still in your head, even as they slowly stop being part of your life.
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