Film

Anima

Name: Anima
Genre: Music
Released: 2019
Cast: Thom Yorke, Dajana Roncione, Frida Dam Seidel, Joseba Yerro Izaguirre, Jean Michael Sinisterra Munoz

Musical
Strange

Paul Thomas Anderson's 15-minute film stars Thom Yorke in a hypnotic, surreal musical journey through fragmented cityscapes and abstract movement. It's a pure sensory experience—no narrative, no lyrics, just sound design and image merging into something disorienting and beautiful. For anyone who's ever felt lost in a song.

TMDb rating

3.6

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love music videos that trade narrative for mood, where a single song and a restless camera do all the storytelling and a quarter hour feels like a dream you wandered into.

Skip it if you need a plot or characters to hold onto, because this is closer to a moving canvas than a story, and it may frustrate you.

What it asks of you: Fifteen minutes of unbroken image and sound that rarely lets up, so it rewards your full attention in one sitting rather than half-watching while you scroll something else.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Synecdoche, New York2008

Charlie Kaufman's sprawling, fractured fever dream about creation and identity. Like Anima, it collapses the boundary between external world and internal psyche, drowning you in layered meaning and haunting visuals.

But It's 124 minutes of deliberately difficult narrative collapse. Some find it exhausting rather than illuminating, and the sadness is suffocating.

Under the Skin2014

Jonathan Glazel's sci-fi film is almost pure cinema: minimal dialogue, hypnotic sound design, bodies and landscape merging into abstraction. Visual storytelling at its most ambitious and strange.

But It's deliberately paced, cryptic, and requires surrender. If you need plot clarity or character motivation explained, you'll bounce hard.

A Ghost Story2017

A meditation on time, grief, and presence wrapped in a simple image. David Lowery uses repetition and stillness the way Anima uses movement—to access something deeper than words can reach.

But It's quiet and patient to the point of being claustrophobic. The famous pie-eating scene lingers awkwardly, and some find it precious.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Anima

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Flesh1968

Both are short films by major artists that abandon conventional narrative. Both trust abstraction and formal innovation over accessibility, using the human body as a landscape.

Paul Morrissey's underground Warhol Factory film follows a hustler through NYC with long takes and minimal narrative. It's formal, strange, and utterly hypnotic in its refusal to condescend or explain.

But It's genuinely obscure and has no plot to speak of. The pacing is glacial and the content is sexual in ways that feel transgressive and uncomfortable.

Blade Runner 20492017

Denis Villeneuve uses visual composition and ambient sound to create pure mood. It's a science fiction film that operates more like immersive installation art than traditional narrative.

But It's slow, meditative, and the plot is secondary to the feeling. The runtime is 163 minutes of measured pacing that tests patience.

The Fountain2006

Darren Aronofsky's three-timeline symphony about time and mortality. It's visually extravagant and emotionally raw, moving through space and centuries with balletic abstraction.

But It's emotionally overwhelming and narratively abstract. The visual ambition sometimes overwhelms comprehension, and it asks a lot from viewers.

Mulholland Drive2001

David Lynch's LA nightmare collapses dream and reality into a spiral of desire and loss. It's fractured, gorgeous, and returns differently each time you watch it.

But It's deliberately cryptic and resists meaning. The tonal shifts can feel jarring, and the ending is designed to unsettle rather than satisfy.

Come and See1985

Elem Klimov's visionary war film uses sound and image as weapons, assaulting your senses to show the cost of conflict. Unforgettable and devastating in how it makes you *feel* rather than think.

But It's one of the most disturbing films ever made. The violence and suffering are not metaphorical, and the experience is genuinely traumatic.

Memories1995

Satoshi Kon's three-part anime anthology uses abstraction and fragmented narrative to explore technology, memory, and consciousness. Visually inventive and deeply strange.

But Anime format may feel niche. The stories are cryptic, and the middle segment is deeply unsettling body horror.

Climax2018

Gaspar Noé's dance-and-drug nightmare uses rhythm, color, and spatial disorientation to trap you in collective descent. Technically virtuosic and genuinely disturbing.

But It's visually punishing, morally bleak, and designed to make you uncomfortable. The second half is graphic and nihilistic.