Pupa
2014 · 4m · Canada
Directed by John Jh Lee
Genres: animation, coming-of-age, surrealism
Tones: dark, surreal, whimsical
A boy on the cusp of puberty dreads his coming physical transformation, seeing every adult around him as a hideous monster he is terrified of becoming.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Most coming-of-age films wallow in sentimentality; Lee just straight-up turns the adults into monsters and trusts the grotesqueness to do the emotional work—which it does, brilliantly, because he never winks at the camera.
The hand-drawn grotesquerie situates itself squarely in a lineage of expressionist animation and body-horror cinema, executed with the formal restraint of a filmmaker who understands that suggestion outlasts spectacle.
The decision to animate the adults as genuinely unsettling creatures rather than exaggerated caricatures—keeping them just plausible enough to feel threatening—is what transforms a familiar anxious premise into something that crawls under your skin.
Reviews
Adolescence is tough enough without having to deal with all the monsters, metaphorical and otherwise.
John Lee's animated short builds itself around this idea in colorful and grotesque bursts and swirls, following four minutes in the life of a boy caught on the precipice of young adulthood.