Eyeballs in the Darkness

I don't remember how I found out about Tux and Fanny, but I'm glad I did. It's a charming, funny, sad, and sometimes unnerving animated film released in 2019 that can be found on YouTube. It follows the title characters as they have philosophical and darkly funny misadventures, and Eyeballs in the Darkness is its sequel.

Many of the strengths of the first carry over here. The two lead characters are still as endearing as ever, the animation is remarkably creative, and there are some genuinely sad moments in among all the absurd humour and deep musings on life and the purpose of it all. There's one particularly moving sequence that caught me off guard.

However, I don't know if Eyeballs in the Darkness is paced quite as well as the first- though it's not far off. There are less mini-stories here, and that does make it feel more cohesive, but I also loved how the first felt like it was made up of about sixty 1-2 minute short films. There's slightly less unpredictability in Eyeballs in the Darkness as a result, but at the end of it all, the ride it takes you on is still wilder than what you get out of most animated movies.

The novelty factor of the first might be gone, but this is still a strong sequel, and if this world is returned to again in a few more years, I'll be happy to see what happens next.