Alice

Alice (Něco z Alenky, 1988) is a Czech fantasy you can watch online on iFILM — directed by surrealist animator Jan Švankmajer and running 86 minutes of stop-motion, puppetry and live action woven into something genuinely unsettling. Kristýna Kohoutová plays the girl who follows a wooden, screw-hinged rabbit through a drawer and into a world that looks like a taxidermist's nightmare.

This is not Wonderland with singing flowers. Švankmajer strips Carroll back to the bone — literally: the creatures here are stuffed animals, fish skeletons and heaps of sawdust that twitch and rattle on their own. Alice moves through it all with a flat, unimpressed expression, which only makes the imagery more disturbing. The film uses almost no dialogue; objects do all the talking.

Švankmajer's debut feature, co-produced with the UK, Germany and Switzerland in 1988, has become a fixture of surrealist cinema retrospectives and a reference point for any filmmaker working with tactile, object-based horror. If you are looking for a cosy bedtime story, look elsewhere — this one stays with you. Stream Alice online on iFILM.