One To Watch: Rabbit’s Blood

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Rabbit’s Blood is a strangely dark and action-packed animated short taking place in the distant future. In that society, there are two rival groups: a cult of dark, cloaked, and militant men, and a society of insurgent rabbits who live underground. We’re introduced to our characters just at the moment a little girl has committed suicide. Her best friend becomes jaded with her cult society and notices a rabbit disguised as a human collecting photographs of all of the cult’s transgressions. There are groups of identically clothed men, secret rabbit association meetings, rebel women cloaked in red, and bizarre photographs. Nothing is what it seems.

Though based in Tokyo, award-winning animation director and illustrator Sarina Nihei became obsessed with Estonian animation and took influence from it to create her unsettling cult-nightmare of a short. “Rabbit’s Blood” is free of any dialogue, letting its unsettling score and the oddity of the characters and situation get under your skin as well.

In the way that the narrative progresses, this could easily provide the beginning to a feature film, or inspire one of the same nature, although it the rabbit aspect works far better in a short than it might in a feature. “Rabbit’s Blood” is a dark yet strangely beautiful roller coaster ride of a film that you just have to allow for the rules of the world to be nullified.