Cryptozoo

Utterly bizarre in the best possible way, this lovingly handmade animated feature by writer-director Dash Shaw (originally a comic book/graphic novelist) isn't like anything you've seen before.

Its ugliness I find to be deliberate, and there are beautiful moments... [Cryptozoo] is a tiny bit of a mess, but I admired a lot of it.

An unusually timid animated fantasy that looks like outsider art, but often moves and sounds like bad pulp fiction.

Page by page, frame by frame, it seeks to cultivate your wonder and awaken your outrage, to spin a work of unbridled fantasy into a depressingly relevant critique of human callousness and greed in any era.

Moments of digressive filigree-occasionally tinged with eroticism, and inspired by old pulp fantasy illustrations-tend to get flattened out by a plot too tediously plain for a film with such a funky premise.

A rapturously hallucinogenic daydream for mature audiences.

Cryptozoo is undoubtedly one of the most shockingly violent 2D animated movies I’ve ever seen… and I write this both as a compliment and a disclaimer to sensitive viewers.

It’s this moral conundrum where Cryptozoo finds its most resonance, as it not only challenges the oppressiveness of those who fear and attack Others, but also the self-serving oppression enacted by supposed allies who think they know what’s right.

The plotlines are so fleeting and light that everything gets diluted, and it smells like XXI Century New Age. [Full review in Spanish]

It is intentionally stylized yet very fitting in efforts to ascribe an unusual and distinct tone to this setting.