tek's rating:

Strange Beasts (5:19)
Dust.com; Dust.tv; IMDb; Magali Barbé; Red Knuckles; Short of the Week; shortfil.ms; Vimeo; YouTube

This 2017 short film was presented by Dust in 2018; re-released in 2022.

This is done sort of like a documentary, though also sort of like a commercial. A game developer named Victor has created an augmented reality game called "Strange Beasts," which uses nanotechnology implants in the user's eyes to let them see virtual, CGI pets that they can design themselves. And they see, I guess, a sort of floating touchscreen they can use to access interactive features, or whatever. (I would assume they must also have implants in their ears, since they can also hear the creatures, but the film doesn't mention that.) I suppose you could have a pet that looks like an ordinary animal, if you want, but the ones we see in this film are more fantastic, rather like Pokemon, or something. Mainly we see Victor's virtual pet, but we also see his young daughter, Anna, who has a virtual pet of her own. And their pets can interact with each other.

And then at the end... there's a major twist. I kind of suspected it before it was revealed, but it's still rather shocking and disturbing, in a way. And I guess that's all I want to say.


mockumentary shorts index