Graphic novelist Dash Shaw’s animated debut feature, My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea, is a conflicting experience. On one hand, it is a film that bursts at the seams with its colourful bricolage; on the other, it sometimes seems completely devoid of fresh ideas. Shaw’s sophomore effort, meanwhile, improves on his idiosyncratic formula with an abundance of fresh ideas. This is primarily due to Shaw’s partnership with art and animation director Jane Samborski, whose all-female D&D nights became the inception for the screenplay. Yes, this also means that Cryptozoo is a much better looking film, but the story components that Shaw is able to cull from Samborski’s fantastical imagery are undeniable.

As trees and stars fold into the opening frames of this storybook tale, we are introduced to a lush and vivid world where cryptids—animals whose existences are unsubstantiated, (think the Kraken or the Jersey Devil)—exist in a precarious state. Like any animal with value and allure to humans, they are either hunted and sold on black markets, or they are cared for in captivity and put on display. But even what is perceived as the safest outcome for the creatures, a special place in the film’s eponymous zoo, has its moral muckiness. Lake Bell lends a voice to the intrepid Lauren Grey, a woman who has sworn to protect all cryptids, engaged in a mission to retrieve the dream-eating Baku before it falls into the sinister hands of the US military.

But Cryptozoo is more than just a phantasmagorical fairytale illustrating the struggle between good and evil, it is a potent blend of the nuanced opinions that converge on a topic as mercurial as the smoke-spewing Baku. For example, Grey’s fierce activism is called into question by the Gorgon Phoebe (Angeliki Papoulia), who worries about the cryptids’ roll in turning a profit. Cryptozoo’s owner is banking on this profit, but she is also matronly, protective, and even romantically involved with one of the cryptids. There is an underpinning of counterculture and free love politics in this film as well, but sadly it is not given enough time to develop during the short runtime. Nonetheless, it is there, and it helps this story have more to say beyond its arresting appearances.

While we are on the subject of visuals, it cannot be overstated just how gorgeous and detailed the world of Cryptozoo is. Samborski has worked double duty with her distinct vision, harnessing a wide variety of medias—collage, watercolour, pencil crayon—to make an animated film that breathes, even when the animation software necessitates sort of puppet-like movements. This film bristles and pulses with colour and texture – scales, fur, and veins contrasting and coalescing in wild and layered compositions. Creative transitions make it all harmonize. There is a sort of Wes Anderson-esque look to this film’s poster that really doesn’t do it much justice – you need to be absorbed by this film. John Carroll Kirby’s original score helps further its effects, featuring an intoxicating concoction of shuffling percussion, flutes, and synths.

It must also be noted that this film makes a concerted effort to earn its adult rating, barbing itself with flopping genitals and some shocking flashes of violence. Unlike in Dash’s first film, though, this content never feels unnecessary; it actually helps ground much of the surreal, myth-inspired world building, and it hints at the dark forces that bleed into our idylls. “Utopias never work out,” says a naked and frolicking Amber (Louisa Krause) at the beginning of the film. This is an old adage we’ve heard time and time before, but its packaging is so unique—a pop-up book gymnopaedia on LSD—that the message become as stirring as it is wildly entertaining.

Sundance 2021 | The Beautiful Collage Cacophony of "Cryptozoo"