Rob Munday
Following their hugely successful Too Many Cooks “infomercial”, network Adult Swim once again ventures into the short film arena with their latest trademark slice of weirdness Unedited Footage of a Bear. Originally screened at 4am on the television channel, where anyone a little “worse-for-wear” may well have crawled under the duvet in tears after watching it, this unsettling mix of dark-comedy and horror is (like most of Adult Swim’s Infomercial series) now finding a whole new audience to bask in its bizarreness online.
Sometimes You Can’t Skip the Ad
Starting off (as the title suggest) innocently enough as what seems to be close-up amateur footage of a large bear in the wild, the sudden introduction of a YouTube-esque advert soon sees Unedited Footage of a Bear descend into a bizarre, nightmarish world of doppelgängers and unexplained neighbourhood crimes. About 30-seconds into this “homemade” footage of the large carnivorous mammal we’re suddenly presented with an informercial for allergy nasal spray ‘Claridryl’ and if the tagline ‘Acts immediately. Lasts indefinitely’ wasn’t warning enough that things aren’t as they seem, shit gets a whole lot weirder as we’re introduced to a violent clone of the advert’s Mother character.
Directed by visual/performance artist Alan Resnick and multimedia artist/comedian Ben O’Brien, who inject an unnerving Lynch-esque tone into proceedings, although Too Many Cooks and Adult Swim’s more comedic infomercials may end up proving more popular (in terms of views) online, Unedited Footage of a Bear feels like their most narratively cohesive and ambitious short so far. What it lacks in laughs, it more than makes up for in tension, tone and atmosphere. It features themes already explored in the short film format before (we’ve seen doppelgängers covered in recent SotW picks The Shift and Doubles) but its well-considered approach means it feels fresh and unique, instead of tried and tested. Despite originally screening on television, with its fake ‘Skip Ad’ box and mock ‘Claridryl’ Website (keep clicking on the house on the website to enter it and explore the world of the Unedited Footage of a Bear’s family some more) its playful delivery means it’s a short best suited for online viewing.