Cryptozoo

"We can only greet the strange and unusual with love. And if we show them love, they will return love and love will spread and envelope all the beings in our diverse, wondrous world."

Even before the title appears in this adult animation a couple have sex in the woods and someone is stabbed by a unicorn. It's wild. 

The premise of the film is essentially that Lauren (Lake Grey) goes around the world catching cryptids, i.e. mythical creatures, to keep them safe in a Cryptozoo but along the way she faces competition from locals and counterpart Nicholas who captures cryptids to see to the US military for use as weapons. 

On the one hand this is an adventure story that feels like it's from the 80s as Lauren travels around meeting and saving strange creatures. There's a sort of Indiana Jones vibe with Nicholas playing a Belloc-like role, only it's mythical creatures rather than archaeological items that are being searched for. This side of things is really fun and the scenes where they explain the concept of the Cryptozoo are wonderful and I can't help but wonder why no-one has used this idea before. 

The film is not adult only because it has some graphic sex and violence but because of it's themes. When gorgon Phoebe first sees the zoo she is disappointed that is looks like a shopping mall but it's pointed out that it needs to attract tourists in order earn money to support itself. The film uses the fantastical concept to consider the ethics of zoos and the people that run them. I don't think it really comes with a moral but it certainly makes you think about these issues. 

The animation here is pretty unusual. It feels unpolished and rough but that works in it's favour. There's textures of paints and pencils which vary significantly, sometimes creating rough images but other times more well-defined ones. The characters are defined by their differing looks- Lauren's face has rough contours whilst Phoebe's snake-hair is full of fine detail.  The style varies too, never quite being just one thing for long and that makes it all the more watchable. 

The basic idea of this film could have made by a big animation studio and aimed at kids but Cryptozoo is much more challenging than that. It's weird, eclectic and even hallucinogenic at times and gently pushes an anti-capitalist world-view that the big studios avoid. 

Cryptozoo is now streaming on Mubi in the UK