Beautifully celebrating Flemish folklore and horror, and the power, craft, and wonder of stop-motion animation, while also exploring the horrors of domestic subservience and control, Her Worm is a deliciously dark, lovingly crafted short film that asks us all to reflect on the real parasites in our midst.
Parasites come in all different shapes and forms; some are ectoparasites that live externally on their host, you know, like a flea. Others are endoparasites that live inside their hosts, much like the tapeworm. But there is also a third type of parasite: the human parasite. These domestic human parasites latch onto their host, often a partner, wife, or husband, and suck them dry, making their lives a living nightmare as they dominate and control; they may not look like your average parasite, but they, too, are worms intent on surviving by squirming their way into the soul of the person they have chosen as a host. Two parasites both a tapeworm and a human sit at the heart of animator and director Rune Callewaert’s delightfully dark stop-motion animation, Her Worm.
Set sometime in the 1970s, a housewife lies on a sofa in a classic beige home as her husband, whom we will refer to as ‘the doctor’, removes a tapeworm that has been living inside her for some time. Proud of his surgical skills, the cold and distant doctor places the tapeworm in a jar and sets it on the pebble-encrusted mantelpiece in the living room, just under a portrait of him and his wife, in which he towers over her, and she looks subdued. In truth, his wife has been subdued since the day they got married, her life an endless loop of cooking, cleaning, and washing, with no thanks, no love, and no affection. In fact, while the tapeworm inside her might have been growing by feeding on her, the human parasite she chose to marry is far worse.
Slowly, our bored housewife begins to wonder which parasite she would rather live alongside, and her fondness for the tapeworm in the jar grows. The doctor notices this between his cigarettes and endless eating, and decides the jar must go, smashing it in a fit of rage. Little does he realise that he has opened a floodgate of anger and pain that will soon see him – the human parasite – surgically removed from her life.
Rune Callewaert’s dialogue-free Royal College of Art graduation project is accompanied only by a pipe organ and foley sounds as the macabre fable unfolds, with the organ not only providing the film with an intensity befitting any gothic horror but also matching the emotions Callewaert so delicately communicates through the beautifully designed stop-motion characters. Loneliness, control and pain are magnificently conveyed through the Tim Burton-esque design of the doctor and his downtrodden and manipulated wife as she begins to reflect on the two parasites in her midst – one benevolent and the other compassionless, controlling and uncaring.
Announcing the arrival of a new uber-talented animation artist in Callewaert, Her Worm is produced by Castor Sprado, who also brought us Teething Problems and Blind Eye. Beautifully celebrating Flemish folklore and horror, and the power, craft, and wonder of stop-motion animation, while also exploring the horrors of domestic subservience and control, Her Worm is a deliciously dark, lovingly crafted short film that asks us all to reflect on the real parasites in our midst.
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