I’d like to recommend an animated short film I saw 7 years ago —Missing Halloween.
A little boy waits to meet his best friend to celebrate Halloween. When she at least appears, boy’s mother makes a photo in her tablet and both walk house by house looking for trick-or-treat. Meanwhile he obtains several candies, she obtains no one, and he shares his candies with her, as well as both did the previous year.But when the two returned to the boy’s house, the boy’s parents were talking to a doctor and the boy joked with the doctor, snatching the diagnosis of his hand.When accidentally the boy reads the diagnosis, he surprises with the words “Imaginary friend”. Although the doctor and his parents says that she friend isn’t true (showing him the photo of the tablet, where he’s alone, instead with her at side of him), he claims her for real. After boy and girl run away returning to the hill, parents and police looking for the boy, making a macabre and unexpected discovery.
This cartoon is really great, with simple black and white lines yet it accurately expresses the characters’ emotions and even mental activities.
1.At their first meeting, the boy sees the girl’s lonely and forlorn back and runs to make a ghostly face to scare her, while the girl, who has not been seen since her death, is so frightened that she instantly, with the basket in her hand, smashes the boy.
2.The girl’s expression at the beginning when she and the boy went to ask for sweets was one of unhappiness and reluctance, for she had tried many times before, but not once had she been seen, and she knew that the result would remain the same today.
3.But the boy could see her, she thought, could it be that today was her lucky day? So with the boy’s encouragement, the girl asked for sweets with a glimmer of hope, but the adults still couldn’t see her.
4.On the hill, the boy is puzzled that the girl has not asked for a candy, but the girl is calm and indifferent. If there had been a line, she would have said, “See, I told you, no one would give me candy.” “I got used to it a long time ago.” She herself knows why, but at this point the boy and the audience don’t and probably think it’s a story about a girl being ostracised and discriminated against, or a boy fantasising about his friends.
5.The boy shares his candy with the girl, who finds her candy paper with the same words – the same ones she was holding on her deathbed: “You found me.” The recurring phrase gave her some touch, and she looked back at the woods and later paused as she left the hillside; she may have had some idea, but at this point she chose not to do anything about it.
6.she and the boy returned home, the boy learned that he had been mistaken for delusional by his parents’ doctor, and found out that there was indeed no girl in the phone photo, at this point must have been both aggrieved and confused, emotions came up and he and the girl ran back up the hill.
7.The boy is clearly upset at being misunderstood, but the girl also looks sad, because she realises that if she doesn’t ‘show up’, the boy won’t be able to explain himself as a friend and will definitely be misunderstood by the adults. The boy’s worries come and go quickly, and he soon puts them behind him, teasing the depressed girl instead, which boosts her determination.
8.So the girl deliberately leads the boy into the forest in the hope that her body will be found. And I presume that after her death she had already explored the paths of the forest and knew how to walk without running into traps, so the boy followed her all the way and was not caught (compare this with the adults who had to use sticks to test the grass afterwards; this has little to do with day and night, the forest is also very dark during the day and the grass is so deep).
9.The boy is still smiling in his sleep, because before he falls asleep they were eating sweets and watching the “eggs” under the tree, laughing very happily, and then they fell asleep tired, and must have continued this good time in their dreams.
10.”You found me”, the core of the play, several times the main idea: last year, the boy found the lonely girl (ghost) in front of the house, is “found her”; this year, the boy followed the girl’s ghost, found her remains; and the boy which has This year the boy followed the girl’s ghost and found her remains; and the boy’s candy note at one point was “Be my friend”, and the girl’s “You found me” could be interpreted as finding such a good friend – in fact I always felt that the short film had implied that both the boy and the girl were more withdrawn and The two lonely souls collide on Halloween and, it must be said, they save each other.
The setting of the work begins with Halloween, a joyous holiday, yet against this backdrop the lonely boy meets the equally lonely girl.
The boy appears in the story as a cheerful, lively and mischievous figure, while the girl appears as a silent, cool and quiet figure. The author gives the audience an embodiment of contrast and sets the scene for later in the story.
Instead of using dialogue to lead the story, the author focuses on the animation itself, using the details of the characters’ changing expressions in their features and costumes to bring out the differences between the girl and the boy.
The whole production is giving a sense of amazement and revealing eeriness.
1.The boy’s parents don’t actually care about the boy as much as they do in the film. They think the boy has a lot of friends and that’s why he didn’t come home on Halloween night.
2.It is clear from the whole film that the little girl has been lost for 2 years and yet there is never a single image of a missing person in the film. The police manual is full of lost children, and the woods are not very far from the town, but it is surprising that the police have not gone in to search them, while the burglar guards are broken and not maintained.
3.The girl is also a member of the town, however, the boy has never met or heard of her, otherwise, the first time he sees her, the boy feels that he has seen a portrait of her somewhere.
The soundtrack is very relevant to the whole production, with the music adjusting to the rhythm of the story and the tempo of the music varying in an orderly manner to keep the audience engaged.