Twisted Thicket

Do you ever have episodes of completely random web browsing that take you in unexpected directions? For example the other day I was watching some prank video on Youtube and about 20 minutes later I somehow stumbled upon this:

Little amateurish, but the teaser at the end looked really interesting. If you don’t feel like watching the chick wandering in the woods, here is the final bit with a rather haunting chorus in the background:

I also found this:

All of this seemed like parts of some bigger amateur made / student movie with a rather interesting setting. You have a group of people living in a magical like “Thicket” where all their needs are taken care of in some magical way. Those who have left this miraculous forest, built a city and seem to have resurrected old style technology to manufacture robots to do hard labor for them. Very interesting.

Of course if you know me, you probably realize where my imagination took me from there. In my mind it made perfect sense: the whole thing is happening in distant future. Thicket dwellers were simply post-literate descendants of some highly advanced human society which built a literal garden of Eden for themselves. The forest is sterile, climate controlled and perfectly suited for human habitation. All the plants are edible, and all the animals are genetically engineered to be docile and friendly. The silly forest sprites act as watchers and care-takers for the humans, leading them home if they get lost, mending their clothes, helping to prepare food and etc.. Perhaps at one time there was some AI entity watching over the thicket but now it might be gone and the thicket while theoretically self-sustaining is probably in a dire need of tuning and maintenance.

Living in a comfortable man made paradise, humans lost much of their knowledge and culture. Their lives are full of joy, but also somewhat shallow so many leave the Thicket in search for some deeper meaning to their lives. Outside, they have built, or perhaps found old cities left behind by their pre-scarcity ancestors.

At least that’s how it looked in my mind up until I found the actual film which is a an 8 minute short listed on IMDB. It’s much less complex than this. Here it is, in its entity:

It is a little bit underwhelming. I also did not particularly like the whole bit about demons, and the twist at the end was kinda silly. It almost seems like the whole thing could have been so much more. You will also notice that the Lobotomy Girl and Thyme videos are missing from the sort. Youtube comments indicate that these were shot for the full length feature which was never finished. The youtube comments from the author indicate that it was his initial goal to turn the short into a longer movie but it became to costly to continue working on it. Perhaps if they did finish it, it would be much better.

Anyways, I figured that I share this random find with you guys. The teaser videos did spark my interest and got my imagination going, so I guess they are worth posting here even if the final product was less than I hoped for. I guess I’m just disappointed that the setting did not turn out to be as complex as I imagined it. What do you think?