Horror is an acid that burns the imagination before it goes to work on skin and bone—and there is no better vehicle to take you into the very middle of that invisible laceration than animation. Whether it is the darkly thoughtful noirishness of Mickey and Goofy strapping a deeply troubled Donald into a chair in Tom Bourgeois’ caustic new film Mickey’s Descent into Madness or the more gleefully deranged space zombie romp Zombie Meteor by Spanish dynamic duo Alfonso Fulgencio and Jose Luis Farias, if you have a taste for horror here is your cake, icing and dark cherry on top.
Mickey’s Descent into Madness – Tom Bourgeois – France 2021 | 18 mins. Vietnam vets Mickey, Donald, and Goofy descend into a darkened post-ironic reckoning with all that war brought them and the world they now inhabit.
Parallel – Sam Orti Marti – Spain 2022 | 9 mins. A man awakes dazed, disoriented, strapped to a stretcher, and confronted by two strange creatures armed with lethal-looking medical devices from a bygone era.
Beware of Trains – Emma Calder – UK 2022 | 13 mins. A woman with extreme anxiety is devoured by four major preoccupations—including the murder she dreams she has committed.
Scale – Joseph Pierce – UK 2022 | 15 mins. Driving along the motorway, Will loses his sense of scale. As his condition deepens, he struggles to unpick the sequence of events that led to this predicament, before he’s lost forever.
Fury – Julia Siuda – Poland 2021 | 5 mins. A bitter-sweet nightmare chronicling a gradually surging aura of frustration and aggression as our heroine loses control of her anger.
Zombie Meteor – Alfonso Fulgencio, Jose Luis Farias – Spain 2022 | 14 mins. Orbiting in deep space, two very different cosmonauts encounter a peculiar phenomenon that rapidly moves the needle from comedy to eviscerate.
