“Animal I Have Become,” directed by Zoe Anne Beggin

San Diego Short Film Festival

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Experimental

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TRT 3:20

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Two friends (Zoe Beggin, Ava Boardo) out at a bar experience an acid trip. Not much more to it than that, plot-wise. There’s no dialog, and what we as viewers experience is a surreal set of scenes examining the nature of time and corporeal existence – all set to a (totally appropriate) trip-hop soundtrack.

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Without a story or a real through line aside from the aforementioned acid trip, we can judge the quality of “Animal I Have Become” on the visual and audio artistry. By that measure, the film is a huge success. It’s playful with the way time works, with some scenes proceeding “normally” and others existing as a slow-motion hallucination moving either forward or backward. There are multiple visual flourishes that include front projection, varying aspect ratios, color smearing, black and white scenes and a healthy dose of impressive gore.

 

The soundtrack is a little more linear, with the exception of a section about halfway in that includes a dominant heartbeat motif. That’s a lot going on in a 3-minute film, but it never once feels like Beggin was just randomly picking filters in After Effects. This is clearly deliberate and intentional art.

I don’t have enough experience with LSD to judge whether “Animal I Have Become” accurately portrays that drug’s hallucinations, but I appreciate that it takes an angels-and-demons approach (a little too literally, maybe) to the visuals instead of focusing on either a blown-out epiphany-laden glamorization or a flesh-rending “bad trip.” This is somewhere in between, which is a lot more interesting.