Art

Richard E. Grant Narrates Anomaly's Crazy Dark Comedy for Christmas

When people and Christmas trees swap places

by Tim Nudd

December 13, 2018

5:37 pm

2 min read

If all the sweet Christmas pablum has you ready to barf, step right up and enjoy this very dark holiday tale from Anomaly London.

The animated short film, titled “O Human Being,” was created by Unreasonable Studios and is narrated by Richard E. Grant (whose advertising bona fides include the starring role in 1989’s How to Get Ahead in Advertising). It tells the exceedingly grim—yet darkly amusing—tale of a world in which Christmas trees cut people down, rather than the other way around.

At the outside, the protagonist, a man named Peter, tells of being viciously abducted—his feet are cut off in the process!—by “a family of four.” Only later do we discover it’s a family of trees who are the kidnappers. Peter manages to write to his wife. “Dearest Sarah. If you are reading this, I am dead…” he begins.

What will become of Peter? Watch below, though be warned: There is a ton of blood and gore, and it’s pretty unrelenting almost all the way to the end.

Well, that was refreshing, wasn’t it? It was almost worth the surge of guilt, now, as we consider the humiliated conifer dressed up in all manner of gaudy lights and baubles, slowly dying in the corner of our living room.

Anomaly London has a history of making bleakly amusing Christmas films. Two years ago, the agency enlisted Phoebe Waller-Bridge to narrate an upside-down version of The 12 Days of Christmas. Last year, it was Patrick Stewart in the voiceover role in “Dear Satan,” about a girl who mistakenly asks Satan, rather than Santa, for a puppy at Christmas.

See those films below.