Written and directed by William McCormack and Michael Govier, AHILU is a cleary hand-drawn animated short film. Not a single word of dialogue is spoken throughout the entire film. Yet it’s uniqueness is able to tell thousands of words from seemingly mediocre tasks.
It’s the story of an estranged couple, dealing with the loss of their daughter. She was an everyday girl, around the age of 10. Full of life, cheerful for the future. Until one day, she’s at school. Then the bullets start to fire.
She dies in the shooting. Devastating the parents, and their marriage.
A pair of ghosts view the happenings, seeming to be the minds of the parents, wishing they had acted differently on that fateful day, being metaphorically and in a way literally, haunting their past.
Considering how short the film was, it may seem silly to devote an entire installment of ‘An Honest Review’ on it. However, I consider this to be a genuine arthouse project, that I believe had some real life inspiration to it. The animation style, rough as it may be, blends in efortlessly into the narrative of the story. I’m honestly not sure how to rate this one, ?/10.
-The Screenwriter