Winston is named for the narrator of Aram Sarkisian’s short, a desperate man dashing off a fevered letter that reads like a crazed diary entry. “I’m not losing my grasp again,” he insists, as he weaves an increasingly paranoid tale about his neighbor—a man he loathes and is obsessed with in equal measures.
The stark animation captures the eerie totems of Winston’s apparent madness—fireplace smoke coming from what should be an empty house; strange footprints in the snow—but it’s the excellent voice-over acting that really ratchets up the tension, as the protagonist rapidly loses his grip on reality. (Or does he?) This guy wouldn’t be out of place in an Edgar Allan Poe story… or maybe working as the caretaker at the Overlook Hotel.
