Juice

A bunch of round succulent and moist creatures smear each other contentedly with an oozy juice. They share their world with pesky little bugs, but one day, they squash them all. In response the creatures start to run dry.

Picture this: you’re in a dark cave. You hear a squelch and a crackle, and your eyes follow the light towards an amorphous grey-green blob of slime. The slime takes you round the corner and all at once you see what looks like a thousand pink tongues, separate from bodies and existing on their own. Red bugs scuttle around the cave, and the tongues use their tips to squish the bugs and consume them. Suddenly, more green slime begins to pour out of the guts of the tongues. The tongues then coat each-other in the slime and as the angle pans up, we see them all cleaning and caring for one another in harmony. 

In this highly original and sometimes grotesque short animation, we are looking at something both human and not human. We sympathise and are repulsed by these tongues. The ASMR quality of the soundtrack further serves to make us shudder but we can’t stop listening and we can’t look away. On first look, this film might look like a simple spectacle of body-horror cinema but watch again, and you might find a poignant reflection on the human experience.  

Hannah Campbell

Director filmography: Encounters (2020), You knows what Meyou wants (2016)