Cognitive (2019) – Gay Short Film on Religion, Shame, and Healing
What if growing up in the church led you to believe you wouldn’t grow up at all? Cognitive follows David from pew to playground to adulthood.
Cognitive (2019) – Growing Up in Fear
There’s a quiet horror in Cognitive (2019) — not the jump-scare kind, but the kind whispered from a pulpit. A young boy, sitting in church, learns that AIDS is God’s punishment for people like him. That’s where it begins: not with sin, but with a sentence spoken by a man in a suit, echoed in a child’s head for years.
Mat Hayes writes and directs this short with surgical precision. Every frame feels like a flashback you’d rather forget, but can’t. The story moves between childhood trauma and adult clarity, tracing how belief becomes fear, and how fear becomes a lifelong scar.
Faith, Shame, and the Weight of Words
“What if growing up in the church made you believe you wouldn’t grow up at all?” That line could easily summarize the whole film. Young David, surrounded by crosses and sermons, internalizes a message that love equals death. There’s a school nurse who tells him otherwise — softly, truthfully — and it’s the first time he hears something that sounds like grace.
The scenes are tender and painful all at once. The camera lingers just long enough on faces to let the emotion breathe, never pushing too hard. Hayes doesn’t exploit pain for sympathy; he dissects it with empathy. The result feels both personal and universal — especially for anyone who ever sat in a church pew and felt like an unwanted guest.
Healing and Reclaiming Faith
As an adult, David returns to a progressive church, this time with his husband and their baby. The same ritual, the same hymns — but a completely different God. It’s the mirror image of that first scene, and it lands like emotional closure without saying a word. You see it in his face: forgiveness, but not forgetfulness.
Hayes uses faith not as a villain, but as a context — something that can destroy or heal depending on who’s holding the microphone. That nuance makes Cognitive far more interesting than another “religion bad” story. It’s about reclaiming spirituality from those who used it as a weapon.
Performances and Direction
Mat Hayes carries the film as both actor and storyteller, with the kind of honesty that doesn’t need polish. His performance is quiet but precise, especially in moments of reflection. The supporting cast — Tiffany Montgomery, Charles J. Conaway, Patrick A. Horton, D. Terry Parks, Brittney Guess, Aimee Dumond, and Joey Thurmond — add texture to the film’s emotional palette.
The cinematography is clean and soft, the sound design restrained, and the editing smooth enough to let emotion flow naturally. It’s visually modest, but emotionally rich — exactly what a short film should be.
Why It Matters
Cognitive reminds us how deeply words can wound, especially when they come wrapped in scripture. But it also reminds us that healing is possible — through truth, love, and choosing to believe in something better. It’s not about losing faith; it’s about finding one that doesn’t demand your self-erasure.
Cognitive (2019) – Verdict: A touching, introspective gay short film that explores the long shadow of religious fear and the quiet strength of forgiveness. Honest, compassionate, and beautifully restrained — Cognitive (2019) deserves a place among the best queer shorts about faith and identity.
