Premise: A woman goes on an international mission to rescue a cryptid to bring back to the cryptozoo: a planned safe haven for cryptids.
I simply have too many of these Sundance movies to get through to be deeply thoughtful about all these Reactions. Cryptozoo is a fun idea for a movie. It's sort of a Jurassic Park but for cryptids (mythical or unproven creatures). And the plot is sort of an Indiana Jones adventure but looking for creatures instead of artifacts. In other words, it all feels a little derivative, like writer/director Dash Shaw did a lot of research on cryptids and didn't want all that knowledge to go to waste. There's some commentary on capitalism that starts to get to an interesting point - for this safe place to exist for cyptids, they also end up being carnival acts - but backs off before getting beyond the surface level observations.
The star of the movie is the animation. It's a wild visual style. It's self-consciously messy, which really works in a lot of places. It's a lot to take in at first, but I started to like it once I adapted to it. It could be a little cleaner in places. Especially in some of the crazier scenes, I feel compelled to remind people that chaos and clarity are not mutually exclusive concepts. The music is weird and a little overpowering at times as well. It mostly matches the animation style though.
Cryptozoo is a movie I didn't like very much even though I do appreciate some of the more inventive things about it. Animation is expensive, so I'm always impressed when someone can make a feature with such a clear visual style. In this case, it did mean that the crafting of the story and dialogue suffered from lacking the same attention.
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
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