Brent Bonacorse’s The Narrow World is a short that looks great, has a lot of ideas, and manages to skip having a giant pitched battle as the climax.
The basic premise is that a massive creature—which looks to be part robot, part bug—just appears one day in Los Angeles. The film includes documentary-style talking heads. A researcher for the Department of Homeland Security who is obsessed with finding a reason for its presence, as long as it’s not an attack. A member of the military convinced it’s bringing trouble. And a psychologist talking about it in neutral terms and human response.
I’m not a huge fan of the “twist” that connects two characters at the end. But otherwise, I did like this approach. It works for a short. I wonder how well it could be translated to something longer.