Kassi is a thought-provoking nearly five-minute animated short from writer/director/animator James Bowman that centers around a young woman preparing to enjoy a sunny day by going on a jog. She becomes so engrossed in her run, however, that she doesn't notice that she's being overtaken by her true element.

While Kassi doesn't leave quite the impact as did Bowman's last short film, The Question, it's still a thoughtful film constructed with unique 3D animation that leaves you wondering and wanting to talk about the film once it's over. Bowman handles pretty much every task on Kassi, a film that's likely to elicit more responses of "that's interesting" than "that's entertaining."

That's not a bad thing, of course, as the short film is an interesting experiment in the use of animation and the imagery is very much used to tell the story without dialogue. It's a film where Bowman uses every frame to share both an element of story and an element of character.

While films don't necessarily need to be entertaining to be considered films of quality, even at under five minutes in running time this is a film that starts to feel just a tad long. There's no denying that at least part of the blame for that belongs to the film's rather methodical original score, a score it would seem is intended to mirror the almost methodical, slow-paced action as it occurs.

While I found myself appreciating Kassi considerably less than I did the involving The Question, it's still a thought-provoking film revealing Bowman's intriguing use of animation to explore universal and relevant themes.

© Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic