Kiddo is a fourteen minute short British horror film that recently premiered on Alter. The film, directed and co-written by Brett Chapman is a horror at its heart, yet it also is designed to question elements of the meat industry by giving a human twist to make things more relatable.
Kiddo is the nickname given to a middle aged woman (Lisa Howard) by the stern farmers who she lives with. Jasper (Paddy Stafford) is soon to join the family business, and shares with Kiddo his intent to look after her despite his father Bev's (Toby Gaffney - Coronation Street soap opera) misgivings. Kiddo finds herself on a familiar bus trip with a load of excitable teenagers, being driven to a remote rural fun park by the farmers, where she tries to placate one of the more nervous passengers. She knows however what really goes on in the park and decides finally that enough is enough.
Kiddo doesn't tell its story in a linear fashion, instead it opens with the bus journey, with key moments from the protagonist's recent past playing out, before things go back to present day. Knowing that this was a film with a message at its heart, I got the most obvious analogy straight away due to the barcoded pale pink jumpsuits with Kiddo and the teenagers all wear. The general idea gives an anthropomorphic personification to animals to demonstrate the darkness of mass animal slaughter. This reminded me a lot of Baptiste Rouveure's unsettling French horror Anonymous Animals, it had a similar idea of humans being treated like animals, though in that case the animals in turn were acting like humans. That is the very base of the analogy though, as the events can be transposed onto any number of topics. Both Stafford and Gaffney stood out as the farmers, their very northern accents couldn't help but give a rough mean edge, something that is complemented by the cold way they deal with their charges. By nature, the protagonist was a much more understated character, but Howard brings a lot of emotion to the character purely by her facial expressions.
It is when the group arrive at the gaudily decorated fun park that the horror begins in earnest, though there had been a terse edge to the film before hand. Horror has always been good at reflecting societal issues, and it isn't a secret that the meat industry has some cruel practices to it. That does make me feel slightly guilty due to loving meat, and while the message with Kiddo was clear, it isn't something that is really going to affect me. Where this excels for me was how effectively it tells its story. This was a very well made film with the actors bringing a believability to such an outlandish story. I appreciated this was played straight as a horror, with no comedic moments to be found at all. This grounded the story and gave it more of a brutish unsettling atmosphere.
Short horror films can be throwaway and disposable, they can be so concentrated on trying to generate scares that they fail to achieve much of anything. It makes me appreciate gems like Kiddo all the more. This was a great film that balances neatly between giving a message about an important topic, but also succeeding as a horror in its own right.
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