Category: Animal: deer
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Leave the World Behind, Dir. Sam Esmail(Netflix, 2023)
What was up with the deer? Sam Esmail’s Leave the World Behind (2023) is an apocalyptic psychological thriller. Conventional American family, the Sandford’s, attempt to disconnect from the city with a family holiday. Presented with an opportunity engage with nature, the family remains obsessed with their gadgetry. When they are plunged into technological darkness, almost…
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Open Season. Dir. Roger Allers. Sony Pictures Animation, Columbia Pictures. 2006
Staging an Attack Open Season (2006) uses light composition and visual design to critique dominant ideologies concerning hunter-and-hunted relationships and to reflect and shape particular cultural tensions relating to the protection of animals against violence. In a scene in which, misconceptions lead to a crowd panicking when it appears Boog is killing Elliot backstage, emphasis is placed…
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Annihilation. Dir. Alex Garland. Netflix. 2018.
“It’s not destroying. It’s creating something new”. Annihilation, by definition, is something “Completely destroyed; nothingness, non-existence”, Yet Alex Garland’s 2018 film entirely rethinks what it really means to be obliterated. Annihilation follows the perilous journey of Lena (Natalie Portman) and four other female scientists into a mysterious, expanding biome named ‘The Shimmer’, as an attempt to discover…
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Train to Busan. Dir. Yeon Sang-ho. Next Entertainment World. 2016.
Content warning: This article contains images of real animal death. The opening of Yeon Sang-ho’s action-horror film Train to Busan (2016) interprets the circumstances that lead to the epidemic at the centre of the ‘zombie apocalypse’ genre through an incident with a farmer and a deer. Considering the film’s narrative is characterised by a linearity…
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We Need To Talk About Kevin. Dir. Lynne Ramsay. 2011. Youtube.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to mourn Mr. Snuffles, who was snuffed out.“ Lynne Ramsay’s psychological thriller We Need to Talk About Kevin portrays the debate of nurture versus nature through the relationship of an emotionally distant mother and psychopathic son. The purposeful inclusion of a guinea pig who serves as a vessel for…
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Wolfwalkers. Dir Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart. Apple TV+. 2020.
The woods are getting smaller every day. At the core of 2020’s Wolfwalkers is a fable about environmental degradation: the mounting destruction of the natural world, and the subjugation of those who live in tune with it. From its very beginning, the film seeks to examine and even disrupt the human/animal boundary in a unique…
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Paulie. Dir. John Roberts. Dreamworks Pictures. 1998
Paulie is a blue crowned conure, trapped in a small cage within a Research Institute. When he befriends Misha the janitor, Misha realises that Paulie can do more than talk- Paulie understands! Paulie is a family film that uses comedy and lighthearted fun to discuss the issues it presents. Paulie’s ideal life is to return…