Geist
2016 · 11m · Irlanda
Directed by Alex Sherwood, Ben Harper, Sean Mullen
Genres: animation, mystery, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
A shipwrecked fisherman heads toward a dark secret. His discovery unfolds as a suspenseful encounter.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a competent animated thriller, sure, but the premise—haunted fisherman, dark secret, suspense unfolds—is basically every ghost story ever told, just wet. Where's the twist that makes you recalibrate what you thought you were watching?
A formally disciplined piece that understands how to build dread through negative space and restraint; the animation style commits fully to a particular tonal register, and the three-director collaboration shows clear authorial control over pacing and visual metaphor in service of the mystery.
The decision to animate this in grayscale-adjacent palette against churning water creates an almost haptic tension—it's the color choice that does the heavy lifting, turning a straightforward premise into something that *feels* like drowning before anything supernatural happens.