The Sandman

Along with Nightmare Before Christmas this short shows that stop-go-animation isn't just for kids. Dark, Haunting tale of a boy's journey up the stairs to bed.

Don't watch this before going to bed yourself!!

I first saw The Sandman during a screening of numerous short films from around the world on TV one night.

Haunting music introduces us to a shot of the moon, and a house, where a young boy is being sent to bed by his mother. The unique animation and direction captures the small child's fear as he walks up the creaky stairs and runs hurriedly down the corridor into his room.

The Sandman appears at the bottom of the stairs, a lanky figure with a huge, crooked head - not scary so much as BLOODY SPOOKY!

As the child is more and more frightened by the noises inside and outside his room, we see the Sandman approach, closer and closer until...

An amazingly captivating film which has great animation, direction and music - one of the most memorable and "effective" short films you will ever see - extremely sharp and shocking...

Wait 'til you see the end!

at my school we were doing studies on the sandman and i wondered what it is because i never heard of it before. My teachers said it was an animation and i thought it was going to be a sweet, innocent film, BUT...... until i watched it i was shocked i thought to myself animations aren't meant to be like this! what freaked me out was the Gothic presentation the way he moved, the way the music was played in it all squeaky and high pitched like a crow squawking. but overall i think the way they made it was rather interesting the shape of the sandman's head like a moon, the way he moved everything! all i say is u should see it but if you get nightmares easily don't bother going and seeing it!

In a quiet town, in a dark house, a young boy playing with his drum is sent to bed at the top of the long stairs. With only a candle for light the boy is a bit scared and thinks he sees all many of things in the shadows and that every noise is sinister. As chance would have it though, he may not be wrong as, unseen by him, a character may be trying to get to him in his room with sinister motives – but is the Sandman real or is it all in the boy's overactive imagination.

Everyone knows that the Nightmare Before Christmas was a Tim Burton film, but not enough credit is given to the animator Paul Berry who was responsible for the unique Gothic feel given to the stop motion characters and the film as a whole and it is in this short film that he shows his worth. The story is a simple horror tale told in the style of a brief Gothic poem; the plot is simple and does keep the tension up and the ending is shocking in its simplicity – but parents will want to vet it before children watch it as it does end with some images of the sort that tend to linger in the mind and may cause some serious nightmares.

The animation is brilliant; although it lacks the budget (and hence gloss) of Nightmare but it is no less stylish and imaginative for it. Like I say, it is atmospheric and the ending is memorable and pretty creepy even for me. Since Berry's unfortunate death in 2001, we will not see any more work from him but with both this and Nightmare, he showed his eye, his talent and his imagination in a way that deserves and receives recognition. A great little short that everyone that watched Nightmare should make the effort to track down.

I saw "The Sandman" at an animation festival several years ago, and just saw it again. Pretty creepy - and well done - short. Sort of like something that Tim Burton would do. I interpreted it as a look at the fear of going to bed that many children have. And if your opinion is that the final scene was too horrific for children, just remember that animation is simply another type of filmmaking. "The Sandman" shows that animation can be as dark as a typical horror movie.

Director Paul Berry died of a brain tumor in 2001. Too bad. I bet that he would've gone on to make a number of clever shorts just like this one. In the mean time, I recommend it. One of the cleverest shorts out there.