Crack: Not a Crank Call... Worse (But Better)

There are some dark imaginations out there. I'm looking at you, Ahn Yong-hae whose animated short "Crack" concerns a suicide prevention counselor who gets the second worst call of her life. The first one — flashbacked to briefly — involves the death of a loved one; the second one (and the center of this film) comes from the young lady who drove the now-gone daughter to kill herself. Neither remorse nor forgiveness follows. No one's enlightened. No one achieves revenge. Baby, "Crack" is simply grim.

Situtated at the end of what appears to be a long hallway leading to nowhere, the operator traffics in cliches. Claiming to be on the Han River, the outside caller engages in a nasty kind of socratic dialogue. Who's the victim? Who's to blame? What's the difference? What's enough pain? The viciousness of "Crack" is jarring as is the absense of an upper lip on its cartoon hero. As short films go, "Crack" is tight, and among its small cast of three, actor Kim Bo-ra (SKY Castle) is definitely not phoning it in — even if this flick is all about disconnections.