Paranoid (1994) User Reviews

A solid debut

[Rectangular_businessman · 7/10 · 2 October 2023]

The very first short directed by Robert Morgan, better known by his horror stop motion works such as "The Cat with Hands", "The Separation" and "Bobby Yeah".

While the animation isn't as polished and gruesomely lively as it would be in his following films, this still managed to be a eerie watching experience, transmiting perfectly well the paranoia experienced by the protagonist thanks to its opressive atmosphere.

It seems some of the ideas used here would be explored again in a much more elaborate manner in The Man in the Lower-Left Hand Corner of the Photograph, the next short by Morgan.

Worth watching.

Robert Morgan's thrilling short film debut

[framptonhollis · 6/10 · 9 September 2017]

Robert Morgan is one of today's finest animators, and is perhaps one of the greatest filmmaker's currently working despite his underground, mostly-internet-situated status. He's the deranged creator of "viral" stop motion horror shorts like "The Cat with Hands" and "Bobby Yeah", and a man whose finest work is in the grim shadow of the likes of Jan Svankmajer and the Brothers Quay; in other words, his work is pretty f*cking amazing. This is his earliest effort, and it does not at all match the quality of his later works, but it's still haunting, intense, and entertaining. The quality of the animation is much poorer than one would expect from Morgan, and it's just straight up jarring when compared to "The Cat with Hands", a film that has some of the finest stop motion I have ever seen. However, this is such an early film from him that that can all be forgiven; plus, if I made this short the animation would be way worse, so who am I really to judge? Anyway, this is a quick enough short for me to recommend to just about anybody. Even if you dislike it, it's only four minutes of your life and it'll evoke some kind of emotion whether it be fear or sadness or maybe even laughter.