Embarked
2015 · 4m · Estados Unidos
Directed by Adele Hawkins, Mikel Mugica, Soo Kyung Kang
Genres: animation, horror, thriller
Alison is home alone on Halloween night, chatting with her best friend Jenna by Skype. Something terrifying happens to Jenna, leaving Alison desperate on the other side of the screen.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A Skype-window horror premise that feels like it's been done, until you realize the real terror isn't jump-scares but the helplessness of watching catastrophe through glass—though I wonder if the film commits hard enough to actually subvert the screen-based horror trope or just inhabits it.
The split-screen format nods to a lineage of found-footage and digital-age thrillers, but Hawkins, Mugica, and Kang lean into animation to formalize that distance in ways live-action can't quite achieve—a considered choice about how medium shapes dread.
The animators' decision to compress both characters into the Skype frame itself—making the screen border the entire geography of the story—transforms a gimmick premise into something claustrophobic and genuinely inventive on a modest scope.