This Animated Short Offers An Alternative To Bathroom Doomscrolling For Frustrated Office Workers

Almost everyone has worked a job where they felt like an outsider, going through the day-to-day motions under helicopter managers’ watchful and judgmental eyes. For those people, we suggest the three-minute animated short ESC.

ESC. needs no dialogue, at least not any dialogue recognizable as human, to express its incredibly relatable narrative. Instead, writer-director Sam Southward uses vibrant and glossy cg animation to tell the story of an overworked woman whose world is constantly closing in around her.

For most of the film, our protagonist relies on bathroom-break doomscrolling to escape the stresses of her work life. That proves an insufficient solution to her existential dread, however. Eventually, things implode before the young woman has a breakthrough, realizing she should shift her focus toward things that matter to her.

The characters in ESC. have a plasticine look that gives the film a nostalgic stop-motion aesthetic. It’s easy to see Aardman influences in both the protagonist and her boss. Small but highly detailed sets create a world that will feel familiar to anyone who has ever worked in a cubicle and encourage re-watching, as there are more fun details in most frames than can be observed the first time around.

German design studio Foreal produced Southward’s short as the title sequence for Mexico’s OFFF Festival last year.