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.