AnimaDEAD!

Kynan takes the curator's chair this month and leads with the question they drilled into him in grad school: why does this have to be animated? Three films answer it three different ways, and every answer turns out to be about the same uncomfortable thing — somebody's body as raw material.Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997) starts the descent. A pop idol ditches her group for a serious acting career and watches her sense of self go with it. Parasocial dread a full twenty-five years before we had the word for it. Mad God (Phil Tippett, 2021) is a hard left turn. Thirty years and a Kickstarter in the making, it's a near-wordless plunge through a stop-motion hell of creatures stitched from meat and rot. This is the episode's "respect it more than you enjoy it" centerpiece.Stopmotion (Robert Morgan, 2023) is where metaphor stops being… well… metaphor. An animator's assistant tries to finish her dying mother's film and starts feeding the puppets her own flesh.What nobody planned, since Kynan hadn't even seen two of the three before slotting them together: the week kept circling back to the same grim idea: in animation, the artist is always the material. Featured Films Tonight's Triple Feature: Perfect Blue (1997) — dir. Satoshi Kon - Apple TV | Amazon | Letterboxd Mad God (2021) — dir. Phil Tippett - Apple TV | Amazon | Letterboxd Stopmotion (2023) — dir. Robert Morgan - Apple TV | Amazon | Letterboxd View Our List on Letterboxd (00:00) - Welcome to Sitting in the Dark (00:58) - AnimaDEAD Horror! (06:33) - Perfect Blue (29:15) - Mad God (49:32) - Stopmotion (01:11:26) - Coming Attractions: The Rockets Red Glare! Support The Next Reel Family of Film Shows: Become a member for just $5/month or $55/year Join our Discord community of movie lovers The Next Reel Family of Film Shows: Cinema Scope: Bridging Genres, Subgenres, and Movements The Film Board Movies We Like The Next Reel Sitting in the Dark Connect With Us: Main Site: Web Movie Platforms: Letterboxd | Flickchart Social Media: Facebook | Instagram | Threads | Bluesky | YouTube | Pinterest Your Hosts: Chelsea | Kyle | Kynan | Pete | Tommy Shop & Stream: Merch Store: Apparel, stickers, mugs & more Watch Page: Buy/rent films we've discussed Originals: Source material from our episodes Special offers: Audible