Weird and wild, Speed or Perish, directed by the French duo known as Seth Ickerman, captures immediate attention in its first frame and keeps transforming into something truly distinctive.
The 8-minute short film, made for the artist Carpenter Brut, is described in its official verbiage thusly: "Conceived as a genuine genre film disguised as a music video, the film plunges the viewer into a dystopian megalopolis where speed is the only religion. A death race pits hybrid man/machine vehicles against each other in a fight to the death, at the heart of an urban environment oversaturated with metal, flesh and pixel. Somewhere between Mad Max and Battle Angel Alita, through a steroid-fuelled 80s aesthetic.
"The film is part of an ongoing approach to treating the music video format as a space for full-blown cinematic experimentation. A year and a half of work blending practical and digital effects (in the tradition of our previous film Blood Machines).
"Originally conceived as a project of limitless ambition on the assumption that AI tools would help us push past certain production constraints, Speed or Perish ultimately had to be made almost entirely without them. The film retains the outsized scale born from that technological promise -- but shaped entirely through traditional means. Technology allowed us to dream the film, but it was our hands that built it."
We've long been fans of Seth Ickerman's dazzling creative endeavors. As our founder, Todd Brown, wrote in 2016: "It's not just the pair's VFX skills that are impressive - there are loooooooads of VFX guys out there with bags of technical ability who will never make the step to directing on their own - but their incredibly well developed retro-futurist aestethic combined with their ability to infuse their imagery with narrative, even in the absense of dialogue."
Visit Seth Ickerman's official site for much more information.
By the way, Blood Machines is still streaming on Shudder. Watch that, if you haven't yet. Right now, though, Speed or Perish is calling your name.