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“We live in strange times. We also live in strange places, each in a universe of our own. The people with whom we populate our universe are the shadows of whole other universes intersecting with our own.”–Douglas Adams

DIRECTED BY: M dot Strange

FEATURING: Voices of Halleh Seddighzadeh, David Choe, Stuart Mahoney, Chaylon Blancett, M dot Strange

PLOT: In the phantasmagorical metropolis of Stopmo City, two outcasts—eMMM, a boy with the head of a doll, and Blue, an ethereal, suffering young woman—search for a cherished ice cream parlor. Ongoing battles between grotesque monsters make their journey perilous. An avenging hero, Rain, defeats many of the monsters, but when the ultimate evil is revealed to be a harlequin-faced beast of a man called HIM, eMMM and Blue will have to confront the menace themselves.

BACKGROUND:

• M dot Strange is the nom de cinema of San Jose-based Michael Belmont, who in addition to dappling in animation is a  web designer, musician, and video game creator.
• Demonstrating multiple animation styles, the film was created on multiple platforms of varying sophistication and complexity, ranging from Adobe After Effects to Mario Paint.
• M dot chronicled the making of the film in a series of videos (like this one) that built a fan base of more than a million YouTube followers. Upon its release, the trailer for We Are the Strange racked up 500,000 views in its first four days.
• The film received the Golden Prize for Most Groundbreaking Film and the Silver Prize for Best Animated Film at the 2007 Fantasia Film Festival.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: So it is foretold: “He will return and strike down evil with a fist made of aluminum foil. Then, we will celebrate with many scoops of iced cream.” And so it comes to pass, when a bubble-shaped automaton emerges to face off against the big bad, and the hellscape Power Ranger at the controls is revealed to be our diminutive dollboy with the M on his forehead. For a film that devotes itself to style over substance and a pervasive gloom, it’s an unexpected flourish of feel-good storytelling and a nifty summation of the director’s particular blend of high-tech and lo-fi animation techniques. Alas, the promised ice cream is not in evidence.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Living, hungering arcade game; a trip on the ice cream train

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Multiple forms of animation and visual styles share space in a bouillabaisse of dread and visual overstimulation. Stop-motion mingles with computer-generated anime, and both appear alongside 2D paper-folding and hand-crafted miniatures. Every scene feels crafted to be as outlandish and disturbing as possible. The randomness of it all is sometimes eclectic, often cacophonous, and frequently intriguing.

Trailer for We Are the Strange (2007)

COMMENTS: This is not the first time that a movie challenges us to consider it for inclusion on the Apocrypha simply because of its title, but We Are the Strange doesn’t need long to demonstrate its bonafides. Even the opening zoom in, on a game cartridge lying on the ground, is suffused with a slick grimness. This dark and twisted fantasy establishes its unsettled mood from the get-go and never lets up, pouring all its energy into creating vistas of neon and shadow that suggest Vegas in Mordor.

We Are the Strange pitches itself as a video game featuring a mishmash of helpless innocents and grotesque villains. (In the lone moment of pure comedy, the audience is pimped into playing the character “Camera,” a non-participating observer with no influence or agency.) This is a bit of a feint, since the quest is ill-defined and the Marvel-esque grand battles only make sense if you know the intended storyline in advance; the story yo-yos between providing too much exposition and far too little. What it does have is an intensely strong sense of its visual milieu. Any scene could be the album cover for the most metal record you’ve ever heard. It’s never gory or gross, but always disturbing on a primal level. Plot is almost beside the point, which makes for a big surprise at the end of the second act when the film makes a big show of revealing its villain (whom we already knew from the prologue). Up to that point, the world has been antagonist enough.

Even if you didn’t stick around for the credits identifying M dot Strange as director, writer, producer, photographer, compositor, animator, designer, effects creator, editor, composer, and voice artist, you would get the sense that this is a highly individual project. Animation and visual effects are cobbled together from a variety of sources (M dot claims to have had nine computers running simultaneously in his studio apartment to produce the film), but despite the melange of animation styles and designs, there’s no sensation of independent strategies in conflict. Strange unveils a series of broken, inhospitable landscapes, yet characters like the anime-esque Kewpie doll Blue and the stop-motion boy-baby eMMM fit in equally well in this digitized hell.

Interestingly for a film with such an oppressive visual strategy, We Are the Strange intends to be hopeful. A foe is vanquished. A character thought dead survives. An arcade console called “SinisTeRRR” repeats a piece of dialogue that, when viewed in a certain light, connotes perseverance: “Beware. I live. I hunger.” It’s a film that may not make a lick of sense, but fully embraces its determination to look and feel weird. It lives. It hungers.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“This day was bound to come- this movie is too weird for even me.  It is an animated film called We Are the Strange.  It was offered to me as a film that ‘may give your eyes cancer.’  Well, my optic nerves appear to be cancer-free, but I can’t say that I liked this film too much.  More accurately, I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on in this movie.  This…is just odd.” – Alec Pridgen, Mondo Bizarro

“I’ve seen a lot of really weird things in my day, and quite a few of them have been underwhelming. Today’s film, however, was not!… True to its title, We Are the Strange is a very bizarre movie, and the weirdness feels natural. It actually has a place in the film, and its insane world, and isn’t at all forced. This is a unique and distinctive movie, and if you’re looking for something strange, this’ll certainly fit the bill and then some!” – Chris Hewson, “Not This Time, Nayland Smith”

IMDB LINK: We Are the Strange (2007)

OTHER LINKS OF INTEREST:

• We Are the Strange – The entire film is available to watch in 1080p on M dot’s “Some Other Guy” YouTube channel, alongside his other works including his latest feature, 2025’s I’m living my life
• mdotstrange.com – M dot’s website, not to be confused with his blog
• KQED: M dot Strange – A brief video profile of the director, showing off some of his animation figures and sets
• Wired: “Strange + 8-Bit + Anime = Str8nime. Learn DIY Filmmaking from M dot Strange” – M dot provides a primer for his 8-step filmmaking technique
• Urban Dictionary: Str8nime – The famed online lexicon provides a helpful definition of M dot’s name for his chosen medium
• New York Times: “M dot Strange Finds a Way at Sundance” – On the occasion of the film’s debut at the Park City film festival, the Grey Lady talks about the filmmaker’s unusual path to the film biz, in addition to unpacking the then-nascent role of the internet in generating cinema buzz (subscription required)
• Udemy – Take M dot’s class in how to “Make Awesomely Strange Video Games with Unity and Playmaker”

HOME VIDEO INFO: 

As mentioned above, We Are the Strange is currently available to watch on M dot Strange’s YouTube channel. The author has also uploaded it to Internet Archive, where you can legally download your own copy should you wish to. The original 2-DVD release (buy used) is long out of print, but may be worth tracking down for dedicated fans due to its intense special features: six alternate soundtracks, director’s commentary, deleted scenes, making of featurettes, clips from film festival Q&As, something called “music video mode,” hidden Easter eggs, and subtitles in 17 languages (including “L337” and Nadsat).

(This movie was nominated for review by Motyka. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)