New Spider-Man Animation Promotes Mental Healthcare For Students

Sony Pictures Animation and Sony Imageworks in partnership with the Kevin Love Fund (KLF) on Wednesday released a short animation ‘The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story’, which addressed mental health amongst children and teenagers.

The 7 minutes 14 seconds film is set within the world ‘Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse’, the second installation of a trilogy on the black, teenage Spider-Man Miles Morales (Shameik Moore). Miles overwhelmed by his responsibilities as a superhero, an A grade student and a son, suffers anxiety.

His greatest enemy yet, it is an interior battle where the young superhero fights to keep from drowning in the fears and feelings of imagined lonely he presumes he must live with as Spider-Man, until he reaches out and finds a confidante in his father, Jefferson Davis (Brian Tyree Henry).

Viewers are once more treated to a sumptuous display of VFX and SFX designs. But commendation also goes to the storytellers, who are able to crystallize and manifest Miles’ anxiety in the one thing that made him what he is – a spider; but not before it metamorphoses from a threatening shadowy figure of himself, to a giant spider that explodes into tiny spiders that seemingly consumes him. The camaraderie between Miles and his father, which alludes to their budding relationship towards the end of the first film Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, is a great set-up that encourages him to confide in his father. While he may not yet tell him the whole truth of his new identity – he does get to tell him of some of it, his struggles juggling with school, his duties as a son and friend, as both take a peaceful walk at night.

‘The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse’ shows the power of film, specifically animation, in advocacy for mental health awareness. It not only offers a creatively visual representative of what mental health could look like to imaginative children and young adults, but gives them a sense of relief and normalcy that even superheroes deal with mental health issues, and that just like them it is okay to reach out to someone, to seek help.

And this is exactly what the animation short director, Jarelle Dampier, and the KLF founder and professional basketballer, Kevin Love sought to achieve.

Dampier: “Miles represents so many of us doing the best we can in our day-to-day lives. We don’t often realize all that we’ve been through until our own body forces us to become aware of its experience. My intention is that ‘The Spider Within’ can motivate deeper conversations amongst friends & family about their own mental health journeys – and I hope it feels like a love letter to those who adore Miles Morales.”

“My hope for the short film would be for everyone, especially young people, to understand that your feelings are valid and that you are not alone in this,” said Love.

‘The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story’ will be incorporated as part of the KLF’s new mental health-focused lesson plan, ‘The Hero Within’. The Lesson Plan invites students to tell their own stories through the lens of mental health awareness via an interactive curriculum featuring a creative storyboard activity.