BurgerWorld
2024 · 9m
Directed by Maddie Brewer
Genres: comedy, fantasy, surrealism
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, whimsical
Two co-workers at a derelict fast-food franchise accidentally discover a yonic meat portal to another realm — a “burger” world, wherein they’re the only ones who can liberate an oppressed vegetable populace from the all-controlling hand of big meat.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A yonic meat portal and vegetable liberation theology wrapped in fast-food surrealism—this is exactly the kind of batshit premise that makes consensus critics squirm, and Brewer commits to it without winking. Most scouts would see the absurdism and file it away; Felix sees subversion masquerading as whimsy.
Brewer situates herself in a lineage of body-horror comedy and allegorical fantasy that traces back to Švankmajer and Cronenberg, but the formal rigor—the editing rhythm that lets the surrealism breathe—is what separates this from mere shock value.
The decision to play it straight in the performances while the world cracks into nightmare logic is what makes this work; neither the actors nor the camera winks, and that singular tonal commitment is what elevates what could've been a sketch into something genuinely unsettling.
Reviews
Ein wahrhaft abstruser Blick in eine alternative Dimension, in der Burger-Zutaten leben und auf die prophezeite Befreiung warten.