Beware of Trains
Beware of Trains

Screened as part of NZIFF 2023

Animation NOW! #3: Within the Realm of Horror 

74 minutes

Horror is an acid that burns the imagination before it goes to work on skin and bone—and there is no better vehicle to take you into the very middle of that invisible laceration than animation. Whether it is the darkly thoughtful noirishness of Mickey and Goofy strapping a deeply troubled Donald into a chair in Tom Bourgeois’ caustic new film Mickey’s Descent into Madness or the more gleefully deranged space zombie romp Zombie Meteor by Spanish dynamic duo Alfonso Fulgencio and Jose Luis Farias, if you have a taste for horror here is your cake, icing and dark cherry on top. — MT

Mickey's Descent into Madness 2021

Director

18 minutes

Vietnam vets Mickey, Donald and Goofy descend into a darkened post-ironic reckoning with all that that war brought them and the world they now inhabit.

Parallel 2022

Director

9 minutes

A man awakes dazed, disoriented, strapped to a stretcher and confronted by two strange creatures armed with lethal looking medical devices from a bygone era.

Beware of Trains 2022

Director

UK
13 minutes

A woman with extreme anxiety is devoured by four major preoccupations—including the murder she dreams she has committed.

Scale 2022

Director

UK
15 minutes

Driving along the motorway, Will loses his sense of scale. As his condition deepens, he struggles to unpick the sequence of events that led to this predicament, before he’s lost forever.

Fury 2021

Director

5 minutes

A bitter-sweet nightmare chronicling a gradually surging aura of frustration and aggression as our heroine loses controls of her anger.

Zombie Meteor 2022

14 minutes

Orbiting in deep space, two very different cosmonauts encounter a peculiar phenomena that rapidly moves the needle from comedy to eviscerate.