Crack Short Film Review

★★★

Directed by: #TobiasSchlage and #BrentForrest

Starring: #Phoney

Short Film Review by: Alexandra James

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Crack is a short, animated film which warns us about the dangers of phone addiction, a film by Tobias Schlage and Brent Forrest. Canadian and German creators who have also produced other shorts such as Like and Follow and Dirty Pool, both animators are now based in Japan. Crack is a quirky and witty piece which tries to highlight issues which are very prominent today. It can be considered a rather negative trait which begins to take over our life, it is our constant obsession to stare at our smartphones! This is the central message of this short animation; however, it is conveyed by using a humorous character known as Phoney.

The animation was extremely professional and the character Phoney, was great at showing the audience the troubles which surround society and their fixation and desperate need to keep up with social media, apps, latest trends and updates on smartphones. The narrative played upon the phrase ‘phone addiction,’ and made it so that the character Phoney (who was an actual smartphone) had a serious addiction problem and in need of an intervention. The features of the character itself were very well done and the elements of addiction the character was portraying such as smoking, drinking, excessive eating etc. all were very detailed and took the narrative to a professional level. What was great was that it was not a simplistic animation, as the character was well rounded, and made the storyline flow well.

I think it would have been good to make the animation slightly longer, in order to bring it back to the central theme of phone addiction within society. It felt as though the ending was rushed slightly so it would have been good to add an extra 15-20 seconds to really cement this message. The comical character and the twist on the phone being ‘addicted’ was very clever and kept the audience engaged.

Crack was an entertaining short which revealed the horrors and victims of those facing smartphone addiction. A lot of hard work and thought was put into this piece, even the voice of Phoney was funny, as it adopted that loud character type and fit with the angry and in denial persona, we often link addicts to. Very amusing and it will be great to see what else this duo has in store!