Review of The Animatrix: Beyond

A young girl, Yoko, sets out food for her cat but gets worried when the pet doesn't show up at the usual time. Asking around the neighbourhood, she finds a group of kids who say they saw the cat over by a building they know as `the haunted house'. She goes over to see if she can find her cat but finds much stranger things than she expected.

Part of the series of animations making up the Matrix companion piece `The Animatrix', I saw this as a stand alone piece recently at a festival of shorts and animations and was drawn in by where it was going even if it was a bit strange and seemed unlikely in what I knew of the matrix universe. As the house gave up it's secrets, the short seemed more and more unlikely and it lost me a little bit.

The animation is pretty good but lacks the heavily stylised feel that some of the others of the series have. That is not necessarily a bad thing but it needed more in the way of substance to make it work. The feel at the start is good as it uses music and an observational atmosphere to good effect but I never bought into the plot and it didn't really go anywhere of interest that added to the universe of the matrix.

Overall this starts well but goes nowhere. Those who love the first film of the trilogy may also find the central premise rather hard to accept.