Lobster Girl & Other Tales is a short film comprised of other short films, turning out to be an anthology of terrifying stories that seem to be connected by shared themes of violence and lovelessness. What’s more, each story was non-traditionally animated, making the film as visually interesting as its deeply tragic premises were.

Lobster Girl & Other Tales is a mixture of stories and media; the viewing reminded me of an old Twilight Zone episode in the best of ways — flawed protagonists and excellent crescendos of suspense that paid off with terrifying life lessons. There is really nothing bad I can say about this short movie — it is obviously an independent featurette and so the low production quality shows, however, where the production lacked money it made up for it in pure talent, turning out a collection of animated stories that were brilliantly written and intriguingly visualized.

The second story and the main story were the shining stars of this short film. In my favorite “other tale”, a sickening story of a late-term abortion experience haunts a man into an early grave. Somehow Lobster Girl & Other Tales tells one of its most terrifying tales without even showing a clear picture — like the story’s characters, the visuals of this chapter were in a blur as the story dragged itself towards its sickening punch line — a punch to the gut, describing a heinous crime and its deserved punishment.

The pièce de résistance, so to speak, was the Lobster Girl tale, which recounted the sorry life of a creature born into the circus life who wound up orphaned, abused, abandoned, and even stalked. It is a rollercoaster of a tale, one that plays out like a comic strip, with the narrator speaking both the dialogue and description as frames of violent imagery provided a suggestive visualization to accompany the narration. After a while, I hardly even noticed the narrator, as the stories were written well enough that their very words held me in rapt attention.

Written by J. Morvay, directed by James Neal, and brought to life by Jim and Amy Mola’s wide-ranged voice-acting and the graphic skills of a host of artists, Lobster Girl & Other Tales is a great showcase of talent that I would love to see more of.  Lobster Girl & Other Tales is animated for the most part, but since it was limited motion for the images my mind was allowed to fill in the gaps with my own storage of gory images, which somehow made for a great experience — like reading a book, only somehow even more fun.

7 out of 10