Ruin

Look closely. Does the post-apocalyptic vibe ring any bells? The stylish art style? If only the cover art had some humans running within a maze...! That's right, before Wes Ball tackled the YA franchise that would be 'The Maze Runner', he created this miniature short of a mysterious man of unknown origins fleeing a helicopter in hot pursuit. The regrowth of the urban landscape, also known as secondary succession to you environmentalists (thank you A level studies), may be reminiscent of 'I Am Legend' but instantly engages with its sheer beautiful animation. The entire world and its content were all fully rendered, with Ball apparently "just playing around" with animation techniques. The high-octane motion blur, positional camerawork and layered depth of far off buildings is a prime example of majestic world building. It's as if it was extracted from a video game.

And that's where my problem lies. It basically has the exoskeleton of a cutscene, with minimal visual storytelling and occasional polygonal jaggedness, particularly with the human. Despite the entire eight minute runtime being a futuristic motorcycle chase that looked like it came straight from a 'Final Fantasy' game, there's not really much else to it unfortunately. Just a mild showcase of visual splendour. The score, reminiscent of John Williams, didn't suit the harsh environment and irked me with its unnatural involvement. Cutting the helicopter explosion, whilst almost certainly difficult to render, resulted in an anti-climactic conclusion that could've presented excellence in animation. Alas, this short film infers itself as a tech demo. However it does give the viewer a flavour of what Ball is capable of, and clearly is a seed for 'The Maze Runner' franchise.

In a future where cities have crumbled and been reclaimed by nature we join a lone man exploring the ruins of the company Haven Nanosystems. Recovering a locked container he seems to have found what he was looking for, which is information relating to the quarantined Facility B. Unfortunately just as located by a robotic drone and the race to escape is on.

Although I speak about plotting there, the thrust of this film is in the four words "the race to escape", because this film is all about a fast- moving chase sequence featuring a man on a motorbike being chased through an overgrown and destroyed city by a robotic drone. It has a simple mission – to make this part of the film really good but, as George Lucas is always there to remind us, you can have lots of fast moving special effects and dramatic music but it can still be boring as hell if you don't know how to make it work with a heart. Fortunately in Wes Ball's film it does work and it works surprisingly well. With minimal set-up, the film really races through the chase sequence with lots of well chosen shots and some quite thrilling movements (racing through a dark tunnel with barely visible car wrecks everywhere was the best point). It has great pace and thrills and very importantly the technical aspects all work to make it stronger.

The animation is really incredible is pretty much all regards. Visually it does have a lot of influences and it is possible to look down your nose at the design of the film and sniff about lots of other "destroyed urban future" films and other areas such as the Terminator franchise (in the look of the robotic drones), but to me it works because it really draws you in and you don't worry about such things. The animation really only has one weak moment near the start where our character sprints and looks a bit like Woody from Toy Story but otherwise it is slick and convincing. The sound design is also very effective; the score gets the heart beating and makes it more exciting as good action scores should, but the sound effects are also very good – it is a short worth seeing with a good sound system or good set of headphones.

Of course it is limited in what it does because it is just a very good action sequence. The film has been picked up to see if they can develop it into a feature; we'll see what happens there but as it is the short film roots of Ruin are more than good enough to be worth a watch.