What Cheer?
2014 · 17m · Estados Unidos
Directed by Michael Slavens
Genres: dark comedy, fantasy
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, surreal
After the sudden death of his wife, Stan is in shock and tries to ignore his pain, but finds himself followed by the inescapable 'What Cheer?' brigade, a brass and percussion band that drowns his world with a terribly catchy song.
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A brass band as a grief manifestation that won't shut up—it's audacious enough to be genuinely unsettling instead of just quirky, and the fact that it commits to the absurdity without winking makes it exactly the kind of premise that makes people say 'wait, WHAT?' before they realize it's working.
Slavens situates this squarely in the tradition of surrealist comedy-of-discomfort, using the trombone's relentlessness as both formal constraint and emotional metaphor—a measured exploration of how grief ruptures the rational world, where every brass hit is precisely calibrated.
The single choice to make the band *literally inescapable and unstoppable* rather than metaphorical or internal lifts what could be maudlin grief-processing into something genuinely disorienting, and you feel that decision in every frame.