Shé (Snake)
2023 · 16m · United Kingdom
Directed by Renee Zhan
Genres: coming-of-age, dark comedy, horror
Tones: darkly comic, surreal, tense
Fei, a 16-year-old British-Chinese girl, is the top violinist in an elite London youth orchestra. When another Chinese violinist arrives to challenge her place, her anxieties and internalized racism take monstrous physical form, whispering that she must be the best at any cost.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Zhan could've made a straightforward psychodrama about internalized racism, but instead she lets the monsters *be* the metaphor—literally crawling out of the frame. It's the kind of formal subversion that shouldn't work but does, mostly because she commits to the bit without winking.
The live-action/stop-motion hybrid sits in a deliberate conversation with body-horror and psychological cinema, though the tonal balance between coming-of-age realism and surrealist grotesque feels occasionally uncertain in its own ambitions.
The decision to manifest anxiety as tactile, stop-motion creatures rather than rely on sound design or editing tricks is what makes this sing—it forces the audience to sit with Fei's dread as physical *presence* rather than abstraction, and that choice alone justifies the budget constraints.
Reviews
Shé (Snake) is a sssssuperb horror comedy short.
Festivals
- Toronto International Film Festival 2023, Share Her Journey Award
- Sundance Film Festival 2024
- South by Southwest 2024