In what The New Yorker calls, “A sly combination of stop-motion and live action,” Eddie Alcazar’s short, The Vandal, lands like nothing we’ve seen before and while we are impressed, we are not so sure we’re altogether comfortable.  In the film, a man recovering from a lobotomy suddenly loses the love of his life, who was also his caregiver. The disjointed reality that results is beautifully rendered by an uncommon blend of the two film methods in what the filmmaker describes as an “incomprehensible aftermath” of the loss.

Out of The New Yorker Screening Room, The Vandal is presented by Darren Aronofsky and stars Bill Duke as Harold, the main character. It opens with a shrill, thriller style soundtrack by Kris Bowers that sets the us at edge from the start. We begin in live action, with techniques evocative of the Golden Age of Cinema, such as a crane-in establishing shot over a landscape of model miniatures and a film-noir-style high contrast black and white look. But as we narrow in on one neat little house in particular, the sense that something is off only increases.

As shots change between live and stop-motion with speed and an almost hammering unpredictability, the actors who also switch back and forth from real to…not, become ever more compelling and creepy. Alcazar refers to the style he is pioneering here as, “’meta-scope,’ –a constant, delicate shifting between live action and stop-motion.” It is especially noticeable in the first museum scene of the film, as Harold descends into the mad depths of his nightmare.

The experience is adeptly described by The New Yorker:

“Harold, played by a flesh-and-blood actor, steps into the frame. Except his movements look a bit jerkier than usual—a slight and unnatural rigidness characteristic of Claymation. When did the stop-motion begin? Is it only Harold that’s rendered in clay? Or is the statue—the entire hallway—also tricking the eye?”

Says Alcazar, “Stop motion is real and yet it isn’t, which creates this uncertainty in the mind. I really tried to enhance that feeling as much as possible.” As we are led along through Harold’s descent (and back out again), the insecurity in the constant flux that the audience undergoes leaves us empathizing with our main character in a way that is hard to achieve with more common techniques. We are left both uneasy and impressed by the journey Alcazar has initiated–never quite looking at the portrayal of mental health on film the same way again.