A man is driving at speed on a road through dense woodland when he spots a deer frozen in the middle of the road up ahead. He accelerates towards it but at the moment of impact everything becomes a confusing blur.
This short film is slow to start as we join the man in his car driving at speed, spilling his coffee and generally being surly. At this point the film has him deliberately accelerate towards a deer, which I really didn't understand as a plot device – it is pretty clear that his intention is to hit it, although this makes no sense in any context we have since this would do him and his vehicle a huge amount of damage. This event gets us to where we need to be, but I'll be honest and say I really didn't understand why the film made the decision to have things occur that way. Regardless, this detail is mostly forgotten because the impact and the aftermath is everything.
When the car "hits", we get no action but a palate change to the film and suddenly a devil/deer character is in the car with the man. What follows is a fight scene which plays out like the split second of the impact; it is very well animated indeed with not only good movement from the characters but also from the camera. The sound design also deserves credit because the impacts have real clout and some of the damage is hard to listen to (in a good way). The character design is very good, in particular the devil character is very arresting as an image. In terms of meaning I didn't take too much from it but I guess there are man v nature elements in there if you want them, but for me the animation and in particular the fight sequence is what makes this so strong – I just wish that the plot device that causes these events was better, but otherwise hard not to like.