Animated Horrors • Spooky Loops (2024)

The Ukrainian horror compilation film Spooky Loops, which was recently screened in Annecy’s Midnight Specials program, explores themes of cruelty, injustice, and all sorts of dark matter.

Beginning as a series of GIFs created between 2020 and 2024, Stas Santimov’s film is a freewheeling collection of 13 loosely connected mini-short films (all made in Photoshop) that take on addiction, the occult, mass media, technology, education, propaganda, and the dangerous and deadly effects they have on humanity. There are vr goggles-wearing cannibals, zombie parents watching tv, a grandfather’s birthday attended by glitchy family members, and people being gagged on a subway. You know, fairly standard stuff.

Dominated by eerie, nightmarish macabre scenes, it’s as though Santimov is unearthing the laden horrors lurking within him — and maybe us. His visual style fuses Priit Pärn, Igor Kovalyov (and the influential Moscow animation studio he co-founded, Pilot), within a David Lynch-inspired setting.

statistics: Posted by Dr Acula — 3:26 PM - Today — Replies 0 — Views 79