Zombie, Zombie: Dolores O'Riordan "Ordinary Day"

Dolores O'Riordan "Ordinary Day"
dir. by Caswell Coggins
In Nicolas Roeg's 1973 film, Don't Look Now, the typically romantic setting of Venice is turned into a chilling environment for supernatural events. A relatively young married couple takes a vacation to Italy after recently losing their only child in a freak drowning accident. Yet once they arrive a series of strange occurrences begin, culminating in the ghostly appearance of their young girl (running through the vacant streets in a creepy red hood).

Director Caswell Coggins sets this spooky video in the equally enchanting alleys of Prague, but it seems to be the tourist off-season once again. In other words, it's anything but an "ordinary day" for ex-Cranberries vocalist Dolores O'Riordan. After (or before) a tumultuous and sleepless night during which she may or may not have been visited by an angry teenage girl, O'Riordan looks out her window in the morning to see a mysterious small girl standing in the middle of an otherwise empty cobblestone road, wearing a bright red jacket. She puts on her trench coat and decides to investigate the increasingly cryptic situation. But as soon as she approaches the girl, she vanishes, and a cross-town chase ensues.

While the lyrics of the song are addressed to a separate person, one gets the sense that O'Riordan is in fact singing to herself. Like Gwen Stefani in "What You Waiting For?," the singer seems to seek personal artistic motivation through memory. The girl that appears in her house late at night could very well be herself at a younger age; spewing the anger and passion that inspires her music now. When she runs through the streets of Prague she is seeking something more internal than external.


The color palette of the video is mostly dull grays and blacks, with the occasional muted green or blue hue seeping in. This makes the eventual appearance of the bright red jacket such an effective moment, albeit a familiar one to fans of horror/thriller films. Collins also switches camera styles between the outdoor and indoor shots, adding a sense of suspense to the chase sequences and creeping around corners in the residence. The characters themselves are deathly pale, and the make-up only reiterates the chilling atmosphere of the clip.

Yet this isn't a scary video by any measure, just one that plays with a traditionally frightful set-up. The fear that is overcome here is an inner fear of responsibility and accepting oneself, rather than a scraggly old demon. As a horror film Don't Look Now hasn't aged particularly well, but as a symbolic journey towards coming to terms with the past, it still has its moments. O'Riordan's video isn't concerned with actually revealing who the little girl in the red coat is (or whether or not she even exists), what matters is the path that the singer is forced to take across this foreign city. Whether or not the artist draws the root of her inspiration from an outside source, in the end she finds her own beauty in the emptiness of that park.