Here we have "Bestia", an animated short film from 2021, so this one is still relatively new and fresh. It is a Chilean production that has brought director and co-writer Hugo Covarrubias a great deal of awards recognition already. Most recently, this film that runs for minimally over a quarter of an hour won the prestigious Annie Awards too in the best short film category and I personally think that this is the film that also has the best chances from the five nominees to take home the Oscar. We will see soon enough if it can. You never know with this category, even if live action is probably even more difficult to predict. I think the film profits really a lot from the memorable main character, the woman you see on the poster here on imdb too and how she looks. I think they even produced dolls that look like her or action figures and that says it all about the popularity really. At least, the filmmaker was not scared of holding one into the camera when he won the Annie Award I think. But now let's take a closer look at these 16 minutes: While the Russian Oscar-nominated short film was one that got better and better the longer it went, I felt that this one her was the exact opposite. The beginning, i.e. First five minutes or so, was still pretty alright and maybe I would have given more stars there had it stayed that way, but I felt the longer it went, the messier the story became and it got pretty difficult to understand what was going on exactly. Even if there was no Spanish (or any other language) dialogue involved, so you won't need subtitles.
In general, this film's biggest strength was probably the character animation. The dog was really awesome too. Shocking when it got decapitated, but you never know if this twist was real or just in the head of the main character. And why was there a man's head instead of the dog's towards the end? And why was she shot randomly? Killed you would think, but then we see her inside the plane again with the hole inside her head. The way we saw her also at the very start, so somehow she even survived that despite the blood pouring out of her skull. You really wonder what is this woman? The title gives the answer. Some beast, some monster. Not human most likely. The one scene you will surely remember here is the one that has the dog do something very specific with its tongue. I will not go into detail. There is no way you will forget this shot anytime soon anyway. But this was in general a bit the problem of the film. It was very showy, very spectacular at times, but in terms of storytelling it came short for me and this production aspect is far more important than any other to me and eventually the key decision why I give this film a thumbs-down. I would say it is the second-weakest from the nominees and I would not be particularly happy if it wins the Oscar. Could definitely happen though. We'll see. I give it a negative recommendation. Pity, there are aspects here that I enjoyed. I still think you'd better skip the watch this time. Also, if you decide to watch it nonetheless, definitely do not do so with (your) kids nearby. It's for grown-ups.
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