The Cat with Hands

I'm a big fan of Robert Morgan, and he succeeds to impress with this short film. The unnerving and downright strange nature of the entire film puts the viewer in a weird and vulnerable mood, establishing the atmosphere perfectly for what is to come. Morgan is a master of nightmarish stop motion flicks and in The Cat With Hands you'll see plenty of said technique. The human, live-action clips are almost unnecessary (I almost like the Pilot version better), but they do a good job in rooting the story in reality, giving it a bit of a background and meaning, and they do a very good job at showing the contrast of real life to the nightmarish land that depicts the cautionary tale in action. There's something extremely unsettling about Morgan's work and in this film it delivers full force, which is why I enjoy his work so much. He doesn't use cheap jump scares and throw things at the viewer with loud sounds to establish "horror" (which I would argue isn't even horror at all), instead he creeps you out to a breaking point where you're mind is messed up for the rest of the day thinking about what you just watched, and I love it.

Great premise: what if a cat had hands??? What would be the reason for such a creature to live!!? Definitely worth the view.

Never want to see that again, will be showing this to my friends.

But I have one question: Why in the 9 levels of hell would you make this???A Cat with Hands?? Whyy?!

Prior to starting to make a short film of my own, shorts had never been my thing. I felt they were too....well........short to have any potential. Looking for inspiration for my own upcoming short film, I began to scan YouTube for scary short films with the atmosphere I wanted for my film, and I found this! This must be my favourite short film I've yet watched! I have a thing for dark movies (which I divide into three groups - Gothic, neo-noir, and twisted). This was twisted with a side dish of Gothic! I loved the atmosphere. Plus the whole story had a "campfire storytelling" style. I can't say what it's about because the twist ending is so surprising! (I love twist endings). If you love films like this, I recommend this one all the way! It's only three minutes long, but it squeezes all the magnificence it needs into that timeframe.

Good: Acting was good (although the movie didn't really require much from the actors); animation sequence (although it was puppet animation); surprise ending (I love those).

Bad: It should have been longer to flourish it's beauty! Overall: [10/10] It was a beautiful, dark, surreal short film.

The CAT WITH HANDS is hands down (pardon the pun!) one of the most disturbing stop motion films I have ever seen, and I am quite familiar with the opus of Jan Svankmaier and Cyriak(though the latter's works are not technically stop-motion but a kind of video editing strongly reminiscent of it). And I mean this in a good way!

The movie delivers unmatched atmosphere which gives the horror an unforgettable edge. And though the story recalls old folk tales which were meant to scare the bejesus out of children, it appears to be original, too. The central concept reminded me a little of that of THE THING (1982), my favorite horror film.

I would have loved to see a full-feature version of this fairy tale. Still, for atmospheric horror fans, this short is a can't miss.