Review of We Are the Strange (2007) by Joseph S — 07 Jul 2008

I'm up for just about every kind of weird there is, or at least willing to suspend disbelief, and give the benefit of the doubt to most anything, as a rule. But few times have I sat down to watch something and got the impression that the person making it had actual, serious emotional problems or was so completely dedicated to making this the first impression.

Director, M. dot Strange, is unrelentingy in his sporadically juvenille agression and crude absurdism, like "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" trying to seem dark and confrontational. At least for me it evoked more pitty than anything else. Aesthetically this was completely unique, but the unwavering bleak and otherwise incoherent content drains most of the pleasure out the viewing experience.

Which is sad, because the animation was unlike anything I had ever seen, more impressive still it was done all by one man. Akin to watching someone else playing video games during the lowest most paranoid point of a drug binge.

I may watch it again one day, it's an absolutely unique kinda visionary work, but I'll have to get the bad taste of crude loathing and fractured psycho-babble out of my mouth first. I can't say I enjoyed it, but it was a unique experience, which made good on it's title. Imagine David Lynch's "Dumbland" shot through a playstation, and youre close to whatever this movie is...