All in Animated Horror

Surreal Idol

Surreal Idol

Meg Sipos
Animated Horror, Dreamscape Horror, Identity Horror, Metahorror, Psychological Horror

Perfect Blue likes to jar audiences out of escapism and suspension of disbelief as a way to get us to think critically about the film as a film—as a story, a fantasy, a constructed narrative. When you engage with the film in this way, assuming the film itself knows it’s a film, the nature of the story changes. It becomes clear that the film’s “reality” has been invaded by a surreality brought on by fan obsession with the fantasy of a J-pop idol. That fantasy comes to literal life in the film, as a metaphor for the real-life dangers of immersion, suspended disbelief, and escapism in the arts.

Cartoon Bunnies & The Incomprehensible Power of Humanity

Cartoon Bunnies & The Incomprehensible Power of Humanity

Meg Sipos & Eric Botts
Animated Horror

Richard Adams Watership Down and its 1978 animated adaptation carries an environmental message of letting nature run its course that can feel quaint in a world of ongoing and drastic human-caused climate change. But its humans, especially in the book, are incomprehensible, godlike creatures bringing death, destruction, and madness to the creatures they touch. In that context, the quaint message becomes heartbreakingly nostalgic for a time when stepping away from nature and letting it run its course might have been possible.

The Ticking of Clocks

The Ticking of Clocks

Eric Botts
Animated Horror

All three shorts in this bizarre collection develop shared and interrelated themes that, taken together, tell a narrative of environmental horror brought on by modern human greed, materialism, and self-delusion about the doom we’ve created.