Written and directed by James Murray, Animus is a lean, mixed-media thriller that doesn’t just ask questions; it pins you to the chair and waits for your answer, the cinematic equivalent of a gun to your head. This short film opens as a brutal assault unfolds in a warehouse car park, all of which was caught on surveillance cameras. The attacker is in prison and is known only as Subject A-652 (Fenn Leon). There, an institutional psychologist (Chris Hardy) is about to take on A-652’s case to see if he is fit for rehabilitation.
A-652’s file indicates that he worked with animals, and, using that as a point of connection, the psychologist presents the prisoner with a set of die-cast figurines depicting a bird, a chimpanzee, and a wolf. One by one, the pair examines the behavior of each of the animals. Consider the cuckoo, which sneaks its egg into the nest of another bird. The nest’s host bird then incubates, hatches, and nourishes the foreign cuckoo until it grows large enough to devour the other chicks. This behavior is instinctual. The pair now moves on to the chimpanzee and the wolf.
“…the psychologist presents the prisoner with a set of die-cast figurines depicting a bird, a chimpanzee, and a wolf.”
Animus was inspired by what Murray calls a “nightmare,” a gut-level reaction to “a pervading sense of inauthenticity” and “the uncomfortable truth that we are not okay.” In an almost existential battle between nature and nurture, our two combatants (A-652 and the psychologist) consider the idea of violence. Is violence in humanity simply a part of humanity that can’t be changed or overcome, or can we be different? It’s almost a call to consider the current “abrasive global climate.” Are we doomed to instinct, or can cooler heads prevail?
What the film does so well is to take a very heady, quite relevant, extremely controversial topic of violence and build a thoughtful discussion around it. The story doesn’t let you watch passively; it forces you to engage, question, and take a stance. The tone the filmmaker adopts is perfect, with minimal lighting, dark blue tones, and an ominous, pulsating soundtrack. All those elements combined to create both a think piece and a piece of art. Emphasizing the point is the blend of archival footage, hand-drawn animation, and restrained AI imagery, which generates a hypnotic, unsettling texture.
We live in a world that’s about to catch on fire. The question that James Murray’s Animus asks is this: are we going to devolve back into beasts, or will humanity find a way to come out on top?
For more information, visit the Animus official website.
"…very heady, quite relevant, extremely controversial..."
