Describing eight minute short ‘Rabbit’ without resorting to the cliché of drug references is something to give one pause for thought. For in truth the chances of your having seen anything quite like it are roughly equal to that of your having eaten some rather unusual mushrooms and fallen asleep reading one of those learn to read books small children got at school in the late eighties. If Rabbit is a children’s book come to life, it’s one where the characters have been trapped between the pages as seven year olds for so long that they’ve gone quite mad. The closest comparison I can make is of my accidentally stumbling upon a website created for the Channel 4 children’s series ‘Boobahs’ and finding my self compulsively clicking in horrified fascination through a psychedelic nightmare that made Yellow Submarine look tame. Much like that website, I came away from the film with an impression of confusion and that I’d encountered something extraordinarily weird, and promptly shared the link with as many people as would listen in a vague attempt to discover why it stuck so firmly in the mind.

The artwork in this animation is literally straight from one of those early reader books, being based on a collection of educational stickers the director apparently unearthed in a junk shop. Complete with floating labels that announce their identity – girl, boy, rabbit, tulip, van, ink, idol, knife - in the large clear lower case script of those same books. The whole situation is so self-consciously bizarre that it sometimes gets in the way of the film itself. A film that definitely bears a second viewing: if only because after the first watch the most common response seems to be one of incredulity and confusion. On the second viewing though, once the brain has got over the distraction of the floating words and focus on the action, it becomes clear that this is rather a clever little film. A dark and strange film that doesn’t always work as well as it might but nevertheless a clever and original one.

The idol that performs the central role in the plot is straight out of J Milton Hayes’ poem and like that eponymous little yellow god he will have his revenge. Underneath the surface layer of abstract weirdness, there is a simple morality that fits well with the source of the animations. Its condemnation of greed and excess may seem to be painted with brushstrokes too wide and uncomplicated, but it’s a style that is very much in keeping with the source material of the animations. This is a story of greed, excess and violence, and most of all of how those who indulge in them will never come to a good end.

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