agentorange [Celluloid 11.10.09] movie apocalyptic news short scifi



Panic Attack! (or "Ataque de Pánico!" as it's called in it's native Uruguay) is an epic five minute short directed and animated by commercial director and FX man, Fede Alvarez. It's also destined to be the coolest thing you see today. I guarantee it.

How can I set this thing up? Giant mechanical war machines drift into view through shrouds of fog and then severely f#@k our sh!% up to the sweet tones of John Murphy's "In the House - In a Heartbeat" from 28 Days Later.

Definitely one that's worthy of a re-tweet.

Watch the short in it's entirety after the break.

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Haematobic (3 years ago) Reply

FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU I just sent you an e-mail about this short film... I guess I got ninja'd lol

Truly amazing film!! Now THIS is what I'd like to see in cinemas :D

Marina (3 years ago) Reply

Holy sh*t.

agentorange (3 years ago) Reply

Heh, well said Marina. Robots show no mercy towards puny humans. Bender would be proud.

Marina (3 years ago) Reply

"Bender would be proud."

Oh yes he would!

Bender (3 years ago) Reply

bite my shiny metal ass!

Pierre (3 years ago) Reply

Thats not Godspeed You! Black Emperor (but its a track from 28 days laters)

agentorange (3 years ago) Reply

Oh snap, my bad. The Godspeed song from the film is called "East Hastings," Though John Murphy's score was inspired by the band's work.

Thanks for the correction.

chuck (3 years ago) Reply

Hopefully this will get the full treatment like 'Aive in Joburg'. I like what I see and there's a whole lot of room to expand on the back story. This short leaves me wanting more.

James (3 years ago) Reply

That's gotta be one of the coolest short films I've ever seen.

eirik (3 years ago) Reply

Anyone know what the newscaster is saying just before the attacks?

Haematobic (3 years ago) Reply

"The situation is alarming, overwhelming; what you can see over there are robots, or, as far as we understand, probably robots..."

bad dog (3 years ago) Reply

holy crap that was the coolest short i've ever seen

all i can say is: I WANT ONE!!!

and: jeez, do a feature film already

Monkey Sack (3 years ago) Reply

Robots were a little similar to Iron Giant in defence/attack mode I felt, also, the camera was too shaky for me.
However, excellent short.

Jonathan (3 years ago) Reply

The first track in this vid. is called "The Search for Jim" from the 28 Days Later soundtrack. Tracks 2 in the vid. is also som 28 Days Later soundtrack; it's called "Rage"
Track number 3 is "In the House - In a Heartbeat" from 28 Days Later soundtrack.
All music by JOHN MURPHY

Aaron (3 years ago) Reply

Seriously? No characters, no plot, nothing but impressive CGI and lots of BOOM! Even for what it was, nearly every shot was pulled from a disaster film that's already been made (car flipping toward the camera). Oh well, moving on... Look, a shiny new nickel!

arnold (3 years ago) Reply

Great short!! The only problem i had with it is that the flying ships seem to NEVER CATCH UP with the giant robot. They always seem to be about to zoom overhead in every scene in the beginning - they obviously are going faster than the robots but in the next scene they're behind again. Impressive CG work though.

Bob Doto (3 years ago) Reply

I really liked this one. There's definitely a D9 thing happening, but I'm getting that more from the matter-of-factness of the robot's appearance.

I'm not sure how this would do as a feature. I think the more story you put in the more the film actually becomes about the CGI and not the lack of info. Sort of an ironic little twist there…

bad dog (3 years ago) Reply

@Aaron: Dude, there's so much crap out there, I'll take the nickel.

I didn't mind it not having a strong story: It obviously intended to evoke a purely emotional response, and they got one (from me, at least).

Aaron (3 years ago) Reply

Bad dog, I'm not trying to provoke you, honest, but I'm just wondering what emotional response did you have? And you're right, there is a lot of crap out there.

uglypedro (3 years ago) Reply

Europeans sailed for months to reach the Western Hemisphere looking for shinny metal. I hope no one wants our water...or green paint....pill bugs.....brake dust?

bad dog (3 years ago) Reply

spoiler alert, don't read if you haven't seen the movie

@Aaron: No problem I'll take it as an honest question. The primary emotion was excitement, at a number of factors: 1) catharsis when the robots attacked, the humans counterattacked and the robots exploded, each raising the stakes in the conflict, 2) curiosity as to why this is happening, but not requiring an answer, 3) always feeling like I was one step behind the action and trying to catch up, 4) appeal of the retro design of everything from the robots and alien ships to the fighter planes, 5) the sense of apocalypse, 6) the excellent music steadily growing in tension, 6) the juxtaposition of elements--the people seeing the robots in wonder, the car alarm going off when the first building was fired upon, etc.

Anyhow, like I said, it worked for me!

Rook (3 years ago) Reply

Okay, I just watched Transformers 2 today and I can honestly say that this short was 100x better - bad FX and all! :-) It made more sense, too.

Meh (3 years ago) Reply

Meh...

Doug (3 years ago) Reply

Gotta agree with Aaron here. Cool short, very visceral, well-directed... but I didn't see anything that told me there was potential for anything longer here. This is obviously someone who can direct disaster scenes - but we've got a lot of those already. Can they do anything else? I'd like to see.