Toonocalypse
2015 · 18m · UK
Directed by Owen Rixon
Genres: animation, horror, sci-fi
Tones: dark, darkly comic, whimsical
Two Edinburgh students document the arrival of cute, cartoon-style aliens called 'Toons' who quickly integrate into human society. A year later, the Toons begin transforming into monstrous creatures, revealing the sinister true purpose of their visit.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Found-footage collides with hand-drawn animation in a way that shouldn't work but absolutely does—it's the kind of formal mismatch that makes genre-obsessed programmers nervous, which is exactly why it deserves to exist. The tonal pivot from cozy alien roommate to Cronenbergian nightmare is so gleefully contrarian it feels like a personal insult to anyone expecting safe sci-fi.
Rixon's hybrid visual language—the tension between documentary realism and expressionistic animation—situates itself in a lineage of found-footage horror while actively dialoguing with animation's capacity for metamorphosis, a formal sophistication rarely seen at this runtime.
The decision to let the animation itself degrade and distort rather than cut to a different medium is what makes this work; the Toons don't transform in edit space, they corrupt within the frame, and that single commitment to visual continuity carries the entire film's unsettling weight.
Reviews
'Cloverfield' meets 'Roger Rabbit'.
A fun, colorful and unwinding short with a touch of the cutest evil you've ever seen. The classic animation techniques bring a sense of nostalgia back to films like 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'
Festivals
- Edinburgh International Film Festival 2015, McLaren Award nominee; Best Short Film Award nominee