Chainsaw of Love
Directed by David Clair, Luke McGarry
Genres: animation, comedy, romance
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, whimsical
After his relationship falls apart, Thaddeus drifts into depression until online lumberjack videos hook him into buying his own chainsaw — until Casey shows up at his impromptu chainsaw appreciation cocktail party.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A man's spiral into chainsaw obsession as a post-breakup salve is exactly the kind of absurdist premise that shouldn't work but does—it's got the weird specificity that makes you lean forward instead of rolling your eyes.
The film's tonal balance between whimsy and genuine melancholy shows real compositional control; there's a lineage here to indie romantic comedies that trust their audience to sit with contradiction.
The decision to animate this—to use the medium's tactile freedom to make chainsaw fandom feel both ridiculous and oddly tender—is what separates a joke from a story that lands.