Coke Habit
2017 · United States
Directed by Dress Code
Genres: animation, coming-of-age, documentary
Tones: contemplative, surreal, tender
An animated documentary recounting the true story of Mike, a teenager who, the summer after 10th grade, suffers two weeks of severe migraines, dizziness, blind spots, and tunnel vision before discovering the cause is a crippling addiction to Coca-Cola. Using the brand's signature reds and whites and nods to Dalí, Magritte, and Escher, the film charts the phases of his dependency and recovery.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Most docs about addiction reach for gravitas or moral panic, so watching Dress Code weaponize Coca-Cola's own visual language—their red and white becoming the grammar of a kid's neurological breakdown—is genuinely subversive in a way that doesn't announce itself.
The surrealist framework positions this within a lineage of Dalí and Magritte, yet the constraint of the Coca-Cola palette creates formal rigor that feels earned rather than decorative; it's a short aware of how to marshal cultural reference without drowning in it.
The decision to animate a real addiction through the brand's own chromatic vocabulary—letting that constraint do the thematic work rather than fighting it—elevates what could've been a PSA into something that trusts the audience to feel the formal choice doing the heavy lifting.
Reviews
"Coke Habit" is infused with a tenderness and compassion that is often sorely missing from conversations about addiction.
Dress Code's elaborate animation explains the different phases of addiction, referencing surrealist masters such as Dalí, Magritte, de Chirico and Escher.
Festivals
- One Screen Short Film Festival 2017, Best Animation
- Webby Awards 2018