Short Film Review | Alma

Alma, a 2009 animated dark fantasy horror short film, is a creepy yet charming film that could almost have come straight out of The Twilight Zone. Shrouded in eeriness and uncertainty, ex-Disney/Pixar animator Rodrigo Blaas sets a deceptively childlike and playful scene that builds up to a breathless suspense and leaves audiences dangling in terror as they watch on helplessly.

Alma tells the haunting story of a young girl, Alma, who is lured into an enchanted toy store where she suffers an unfortunate fate. Captivated by a doll replica of herself in its storefront window, she decides to enter, discovering only too late that the toy store is not at all as it appears.

In the absence of dialogue, Alma relies entirely on music, sound, effects and visuals alone to carry the film—and Alma does it masterfully. While the striking juxtaposition of Disney/Pixar’s bright animation style over a dark storyline lends the effect of making Alma all the more unsettling, its music score blends lightness and whimsicality with darker notes, invoking a sinking feeling of dread. Watching Alma feels like watching a baby stroller precariously rolling across a train platform in the way of an oncoming train that you just know can’t stop in time. No jump scares—just genuinely scary.

In all of five minutes and 30 seconds, Blaas delivers a quick, bewitching, cautionary tale of the perils of desiring material things. Short and not-so-sweet, Alma will take you a long time to forget.