OPAL
Spoiler review. I won't be touching on the entire short.
No bias but Jack Stauber is my favourite artist EVER. He puts more than 100% in everything he does. He is a man of innovation and uniqueness. I personally think that we need more indie creations like this and huge props to Adult Swim for allowing creators be free and weird with what their creators make.
Jack Stauber creates a highly uneasy and disturbing horror musical short that is one of his best and most ambitious projects. Jack Stauber has worked on the short "SHOP: A Pop Opera" which conveyed people's biggest problems in life in a light-hearted and positive musical. But SHOP is not similar to Opal, which tells audiences a disheartening story about rejection and exclusion as a child.
Opal is devastating, trippy and uneven and it's possibly Jack's darkest project yet. Opal is about a girl who fantasises about a family that isn't hers'. She fantasises about a girl that she wishes to be.
The character designs are off-putting and ugly which is beautiful due to the context of the film. The only characters that look somewhat normal are the family that the girl, (who's name is Opal, which is also a fantasy) dreams about. The girl is told to not remind herself about the house on the other side of the road.
The end of the film is a perfect plot twist that brings Opal (Claire, her real name) back to reality with her real family as we all realise that the family she wishes too be with is all a fantasy.
There's A LOT of symbolism. Food, TV, Makeup, Drugs, Billboard advertisement and windows. Which all represent child negligence, child abuse, isolation, rejection etc.
The songs have the classic Jack Stauber indie style to it and a lot of them SLAP.
This is possibly THE BEST horror short I've ever watched. THE BEST short film I've ever watched...
No, seriously, Jack Stauber has made a masterpiece and has made a story that sweeps a lot of modern horror to the ground.
Coraline but make it more devastating and abusive.