Escargore

"Escargore" is a cute AND disgusting AND rather nasty little short film by Oliver Hilbert. It has surprisingly nice graphics and Hilbert seamlessly blends computer generated characters with real life scenes of a kitchen. In this kitchen...a group of cute cartoon snails that have no idea they're on the menu! And, one by one, these cuties are killed off or accidentally kill themselves.

So what do I like about the film? Two thinks...the animation and the nasty spirited script...seriously. As for the CG, it looks amazingly professional...not the work of a guy directing his second short film. As for the nasty humor, I actually loved how the characters were cute but the film never resorted to a happy ending or sentiment. It was edgy and funny...and I'd like to see more.

Escargore (2015)

**** (out of 4)

A man picks a vegetable from his garden and brings it inside. This is where we meet five snails who were on that vegetable and now find themselves inside the house and trying to get outside before being killed.

I came across ESCARGORE by accident and I'm certainly glad that I took the time to watch it. I recently watched all the shorts that were Oscar nominated in 2015 and this here was by far much better and more creative than any of them. This isn't a spoiler but the screenplay has a very dark sense of humor that comes full display when it comes time for the snails to be killed. I'm not going to ruin how they're killed but it's in a delightfully funny fashion and there's plenty of gore (slime in this case) to each death.

I was really shocked at how wonderful the CG was. In fact it was rather flawless and had a very deep 3D effect to it. I also thought the vocal work was terrific and that the snail characters were brought to life in a wonderful fashion. As you can tell, I really, really loved this little gem and hopefully director Oliver Hilbert has some more films lined up in the future.