Dash Shaw has spent his career experimenting with various visual mediums and unique forms of storytelling with his newest feature Cryptozoo being no different. Premiering as part of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, Cryptozoo imagines a world where reality and myth blend leaving mythical creatures scattered across the globe and a select few trying to fight for their freedom and safety.
Out of all these creatures, the dream-eating Baku remains the most elusive of these creatures. And both the government and cryptozookeepers are growing closer and closer to all-out war to find the animal and either turn it into a weapon or protect it from evil hands.
With a clear Jurassic Park influence, the world of Cryptozoo is perhaps one of the film’s greatest assets. In the same way that the image of dinosaurs finding their place in the modern world and coming into combat against character wowed audiences in 1993, Cryptozoo finds a similar sense of awe and creativity creating a playground of mythical figures and creatures that feel unique and exciting.
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Completely being able to ditch the traditional limitations of the physical world both with the creatures themselves and the animated visual medium which captures them, Cryptozoo is built with creativity as a central identity of its backbone in the best of ways. Even if the fight for survival that the characters face doesn’t always break the cliches of the genre, seeing these mythological creatures come together and wreak havoc against the humans of the story feels exciting and unique.
It also helps that the animation featured throughout the film is to the quality it is. Highly stylized, the film’s visuals both capture the beauty and brutality of its world with an incredible skill and craft. Specifically through the film’s uses of color, there are sequences that will both memorize and terrorize the audience. Where it is impossible not to lose oneself in the pure beauty of the light shows from the zoo’s Will-o’-the-wisps display, but also it is impossible not to be put on edge by the brutal murder of a unicorn who gets its head bashed in with a rock. The film is both majestic and unforgiving in a sense similar to nature itself.
This isn’t to say that the film is just a raw expression of nature however, the film’s screenplay, which also comes from Dash Shaw, has its own complexities and purposes. In an incredibly casual sense, Cryptozoo finds itself contributing multiple larger conversations that are both unique and valuable. From the logical fallacies of zoos and sanctuaries that attempt to make their space attractable and rewarding to the general public, to what rights an animal truly has and how they should be treated, Cryptozoo might not find any incredible breakthrough in any of these conversations but the simple inclusion of them – even in a rather basic sense – helps give the film a needed depth and purpose.
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The voice acting throughout the feature is also rather stellar. Lake Bell and Emily Davis speak with a real authenticity which helps bring their characters to life. For a film so defined by the world of fiction, there is something incredibly human to the characters throughout the film. Even when their backstories and identities are based in mythological ideas, the film is careful to build humanity into their experience which will speak to the vast majority of audience members. From a young woman who is so desperate to achieve her dreams despite the entire world seemingly working against her, to a young gorgon who is afraid to open up considering how many she has hurt in the past, it is incredibly easy to empathize with these characters and become invested in their drama.
Even as the medium of animation grows and it seems like the boundaries of the genre are approaching, a film like Cryptozoo will come along and prove just how important and unique the medium can be. From its fictitious worldbuilding to its clearly human core, Cryptozoo stands as a resounding success and easily will go down as one of the best animated films of the year.
