Director Joseph Bennett and Charles Huettner’s short “Scavengers” originally premiered on cable television and is admittedly at home in the Adult Swim studio library. The studio that thrives on creating different entertainment, “Scavengers” is an ambitious and thought provoking animated film with no dialogue, but incredible sound design. The experience of “Scavengers” hinges on every sound we hear in this new environment, and we’re thrust in to a new world without having characters over explain and hold our hands through what we’re watching.
What’s mostly meant to be observed by “Scavengers,” I can deduce, is that even alien nature like Earth nature is an endless chain. Things are taken, things are given, and the entire cycle of life and death is a stream affected by minute and humongous occurrences. “Scavengers” is set on the alien planet Vesta Minor where two stranded astronauts wait and prepare for the day of ahead of them. Knowledgeable of the world around them, they begin traveling through the vast regions of this world, and forage through various wild life and nests to acquire various elements they’re in desperate need of. The animation paired with the vivid sound design make this a beautiful but harrowing experience, where everything we see the scavengers venture in to is never quite what it seems.
Every time we view an animal or kind of environment, the animators and directors have a good time completely subverting expectations, and playing with our sense of depth perception and dynamic of nature. What I love about “Scavengers” most is that the smaller story elements mean nothing when we get a bigger glimpse in to what this journey is leading up to. When we finally understand, it’s a startling and bittersweet glimpse in to various states of being, and an interesting allegory for how everything in his universe is so foreign to one another, and yet incredibly similar. “Scavengers” is abstract, thought provoking, and quite wonderful.
Watch it on Adult Swim.