While playing a game of hide and seek with his gran, a boy called Willy opens his bedroom door to find that something has destroyed both his house and the village of Nix. Residents run around in panic, singing of woe and missing people (and fruit). They tell of a monster taking off with people into the woods and Willy sets off to try and find his grandmother.
This 30 minute musical, written, directed, produced and composed by Rosto is a dark fairy tale of monsters and stories and boasts the voices of Terry Gilliam and Tom Waits. The awesome and distinctive animation is a seamless mixture of CGI and live-action, played out on beautiful hand-painted backgrounds.
The ins and outs of the plot are not the easiest to follow, which isn’t helped by the sound levels seeming out of balance – the dialogue is sometimes obscured by the sound effects and music. It’s at heart an existential tale, albeit one populated by such creatures as Waits’ creepy swallow consistently mistaken for a crow, the spindly tree-like ‘Langemann’ and a rolling nudist giant.
The Monster of Nix is engaging and enjoyably strange, and could easily have stretched to feature length. For a half hour short, it is quite complicated but hits the right notes with both adults and children alike.
Mild Concern 