100,000 Acres of Pine

Plot

Ranger Megan Patel loses her brother, Daniel, under mysterious circumstances. Struggling to understand how he died, she finds herself alone, venturing into the vast pine forest. However, as she follows the trail of her brother into the woods, the trees begin to change and shift around her. Soon Megan arrives in places without any recollection of how she got there. Almost as if something is pulling her deeper into the woods. Something dark and dangerous, that Megan might not be able to escape.

Cast

Not applicable and made by a first time creator

Verdict

A multi-award winning short I can confidently say I'm not keen on the animation style here and likely never will be, it's like traditional stop motion but with cgi and it just doesn't work for me.

Seeing this ranger navigate her way through the forest seeking her late brother should be enthralling yet in reality it comes across very dull, nothing truly happens until the end and when it does it's so bog standard and cliched I was unimpressed.

I often see generic unimpressive short films getting awards and have to assume that the field is so thin it's not hard to win if you know how to get your foot in the door/the right people. There are great animated shorts out there, there are great horror shorts out there, this is deserving of nothing.

Rants

I'm notorious for not liking "Arthouse" and alas of all the mediums, short films seems to have the most. Films that come across pretentious, that present themselves as intelligent but panda to the pseudo-intellectuals and films that have a certain style that reeks of arrogance and entitlement.

The Good

• A degree of interest

The Bad

• Horrid animation
• Arthouse
• I just didn't "Get" it.

A ranger. A huge forrest. The dessapear of her brother and the trip for discover the truth. Beautiful drawing, smart build of tension, nice clues and the fair end. A film about danger and need of truth and fight for understand it. Well crafted, inspired trip of the viewer near Megan Patel, to the reality behind every supposition.

I haven't managed to keep up reviewing the Disney Plus shorts as regularly as I'd have liked, so much so there are quite a few new ones that have appeared on the app since I last looked. One of those new additions was "100,000 Acres of Pine" a trippy horror short that reminded me of David Lynch.

Megan (Jerrica Cleland/Sarah Airreiss) a Park Ranger in a woodland area heads out into the woods to explore what happened to her recently deceased brother, Daniel (Lawrence Marvit/Tobias Taastrom). She drawn into the woods by a series of tapes that Daniel has left, talking about his own reticence to enter and how he feels like the woods are shifting. Soon Megan is questioning the reality of what she's seeing and hearing.

I quite liked the animation style, which uses 3D computer generated images to mimic a style of stop motion animation. I'm not quite sure how this was created, but I'd imagine it involves deleting certain frames to make the movement seem a little less smooth and polished.

Plot wise I'm a little less inclined to be impressed. It becomes pretty cryptic fairly quickly and the reality starts to wash away. There is a time jump element to it, as she finds a ranger station that we're told Daniel found previously and that had burned down at some point in the past - then there's a reveal of what might have been behind Daniel's death, but are we to trust what we see here either? Who knows? Does it add up to much? Not really.

Truth is the piece is essentially Jennifer Wright's final year film and is designed to show off her design and animation talent, rather than provide a perfect narrative for me. The fact that it's in Disney Plus' shorts section, alongside "Steamboat Willy" is probably more than she could have realistically hoped for. She doesn't have any more IMDB credits, but her website says that she's been working in animation since then, whilst I'm not sure I actively recommend "100000 Acres of Pine" it's clear that she's talented.