All is fun and games, until a shadowy creature appears in a dark doorway of the game, and creaking noises sound in her bedroom. She puts down the game and tries to go tosleep, but something turns her lamp off again. She picks the game up, more out of desperation than good sense, and a question pops up on the screen that someone, or something, wants to be let out. She wisely clicks ‘no’, but this seems to have no impact, as suddenly an invisible creature is making deep claw prints on her bed. She jumps off and a head appears wrapped under her blanket on the bed. Again, the game asks to be let out, but before she can answer the bed creature lets out a roar and leaps for her. She cowers back and accidentally presses “yes” in the process.

Pressed against her wall still clutching the Switch the Girl has her eyes squeezed closed, but nothing happens. She slowly opens her eyes. The bed is empty and the game no longer seems to make things happen in the room. With great relief the Girl sighs and puts down the game only for the real monster to suddenly appear out from under her blanket right in her face. We cut to black and assume the worse.

This ‘techno-horror’ had great timing as it was released during the pandemic lockdown of 2020, which had with many people killing time on various at home entertainment devices such as the Nintendo Switch. By choosing the innocent Animal Crossing as the gateway for a murderous monster, the film takes advantage of a safe place to greatly increase the unease and terror in this short.

Like others in this genre, this short uses the trope of the ‘threshold’ where a creature must be invited, or let in, to wreak havoc on the victim. With the tremendous success of this short online and at SXSW, Julian Terry, was quickly offered feature film options and hopefully we’ll see a longer version of this short on the

big screen soon.