Cryptozoo review: the rare animated film that’s strictly for adults

The Polygon Entertainment team has logged in to Sundance Film Festival 2021, which has become virtual for the first time. Here’s what you need to know about the indie gems coming soon to streaming services, theaters, and the cinematic zeitgeist.

Logline: In a world secretly filled with mythical monsters, three women attempt to round up the strange surviving creatures and bring them to a sanctuary where people can enjoy them in peace. A military bounty hunter has more brutal plans for the trio.

Longest line: Dash Shaw, the comic book artist and freelance animator behind the Funny and Freaky 2016 My whole high school is sinking into the sea, come back with Cryptozoo, which is equally forced, savage and unpredictable. Opening a dreamy sex scene, where partners Amber (Louisa Krause) and Matthew (Michael Cera) strip down in the woods at night and dream of a future hippie ideal of peace and equality in the world, the film takes a grotesquely bloody turn. Almost immediately. They live in an ugly world that does not respect high ideals and wonderful vibrations. Cryptid hunter Lauren Gray (Lake Bell) certainly knows: since childhood, when a Japanese dream-eating creature named baku delivered her from nightmares, Lauren tried to protect the cryptids from capture, exploitation. and massacre.

It’s hard work, both because inhabitants of sites around the world tend to capture cryptids for nefarious purposes, and because Lauren’s opposite, Nick (Thomas Jay Ryan), follows her in the all over the world, collecting his finds for him. The US military wants Baku in part because it thinks it could be used to erase “counter-culture dreams” and end left-wing protests. Lauren ends up chasing Baku ahead of her, with the help of the gorgon Phoebe (Angeliki Papoulia), her aging idealistic patroness Joan (Grace Zabriskie) and the unreliable mercenary faun Gustav (Peter Stormare).

A naked woman in the woods, splashed with blood, in Cryptozoo

Image: Sundance Institute

what is it Cryptozoo Try to do? The film is nominally an adventure story, with shootouts, brawls, the slaughter of cryptids against cryptids, and a quest that ends badly for a multitude of humans and creatures. But it also has a strong anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian tendency that extends not only to the military-industrial complex, but more generally to humanity’s relationship with animals in general. When Phoebe first sees the Cryptozoo, the sanctuary where Joan is home to dozens of oddities, some with human intelligence, the Gorgon is deeply disappointed. He points out that it looks more like a mall than a shelter. And it is: it’s packed with mall stores and carnival shows, and Lauren boasts of selling toys inspired by every confirmed cryptid. The garish zoo may not be his ideal form of protection, but it is necessary, he says, that he must earn money to support himself.

While the Cryptozoo itself is built on this compromise between idealism and practicality, Joan is a thoroughbred type whose worldview revolves around love. She has a passionate and supportive relationship with one of her cryptids, and she is convinced that the world’s problems can be solved with more of these types of connections. But she and her fellow environmentalists may benefit more than the cryptids. The film finally suggests that trying to contain them is doing them no favors. Shaw acknowledges Lauren’s heroism by preying on predators who see every creature and person around them in terms of profit. But even she receives harsh criticism from Nick, who feels like he’s doing the job as much for his own confidence as for pure emotion.

The quote that says it all: “We can only welcome the strange and the unusual with love. And if we show them love, they will love us back. And love will spread and envelop all beings in our diverse and wonderful world.

An injured woman wearing a green cape and glasses sits in the rain as her rival watches her in Cryptozoo.

Image: Sundance Institute

Does he succeed? CryptozooWhile morale can seem blurry in the midst of all the action and incident, you feel more focused on communicating the wide variety of personalities and goals of your characters than finding common ground between them. This makes the tale more realistic than your average adventure story, but also messier and more prone to distractions, like a subplot about Phoebe’s impending wedding which isn’t much. The Cryptid Protectors are not a unified or even targeted group, they are a handful of temporary allies who do not fully agree on the methodology or purpose except when the going gets serious.

The pace also varies considerably: the woody opening romance feels like an unhurried short story, with Matthew naked atop Cryptozoo close up like a beautiful dream image in a long streak. But a showdown between Lauren and Nick over a Russian bird-woman hybrid named Alkonost is more like an episode of The Raiders of the Lost Ark, with Belloq rushing to grab the idol after Indy does all the hard work. The film moves back and forth between action and the logic of dreams, and between embracing high ideals and watching people suffer as they try and fail to put them into practice. It’s certainly a cynical story – Shaw’s storyline has little faith in his heroes’ ability to save the day or in his good intentions.

What does this bring us? Very similar All my high school Sink into the sea, or for that matter like any good outdoor art, Cryptozoo It ends up being a window into a decidedly non-commercial spirit and a form of storytelling that isn’t the effort of the polished and experienced committee emerging from animation houses like Disney and DreamWorks. It is rare to see an American animation directed solely and specifically at adults, but Cryptozoo Remarkably focuses on an author audience, not only because of the violent and sexual child-friendly content, but because of the complicated and philosophical shifts in perspective throughout the project.

And after generations of films increasingly processed and visually crafted from these media and others that emulate them, the rough hand-drawn feel of projects like Cryptozoo it can be shocking. It would be easy to call it ugly, but it is more correct to call it idiosyncratic. Certainly the pictures deserve a much closer examination, to see where the textures of the paints and pencils give the pictures a rougher and more specific feel, or where they change from style to style, like the difference between them. rough contours of the face. of Lauren and the Belles. Phoebe’s Lined Snake Hair Detail: Gives protagonists an even more visual character.

Sometimes the movement of the character Cryptozoo It is reminiscent of Indonesian wayang puppets, with stiff figures that move widely around the joints. Some sequences deviate from an entirely different style, such as the magnificent light show performed at one point by a series of sentient light creatures. Nothing about the story’s destination or how it will get there stylistically can be taken for granted. This is one of the greatest joys of Shaw’s plans: the feeling that something new and different is happening, that anti-capitalist, anti-conformist and anti-containment bent that stretches across history and also extends to all aspects of the film’s aesthetic. .

The most memorable moment: Cryptozoo It’s full of surprising moments and weird visuals that the creative members could certainly repurpose, but perhaps the most obvious comes when Phoebe’s headed snakes bite people. The victims are not only poisoned, their flesh rebels and deforms, Akira. The image is a good setup for an “Oh no, the consequences of my own actions!” Style meme.

When can we see it? Cryptozoo look for the distribution.

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