World Record

When I heard the title "World Record" as part of a collection of short movies in the matrix universe, I was quite enthralled. There is a lot of potential here. Could it be about an outsider like Neo & friends achieving a world record for fun? Could it be about a person who loses their perspective of reality and does impossible things? What is it about?

The answer is something close to the latter. It's about an athlete who gets too focused on his desire to achieve a record. Or something. Quite frankly, the story is poorly told, interwoven, trying to be very clever and ending up being awkward. The animation shows craftsmanship, but at the same time, it looks surprisingly ugly and basic. But the real crux is the story - admittedly, I would not have understood it without watching a making of or a directors commentary or whatever it was, explaining a few of the final scenes. The movie, perhaps like the athlete's life, or at least his run, is a blur.

The sad thing is all the wasted potential. Where "Beyond" takes a simple idea - a glitch in the matrix producing a haunted house - and turns it into something truly special, this short movie takes a special idea - an athlete breaking the laws of the matrix by sheer willpower - and turns it into something so convoluted it's disappointingly boring.

5/10