Junk Head

Junk Head (2022) is a Japanese stop-motion sci-fi film you can watch online on iFILM. Almost every frame is the work of one man — Takahide Hori, who directed, animated, sculpted the puppets and built the sets across seven years in his own workshop.

Far in the future, humans have engineered near-immortality but lost the ability to breed, while a plague thins out what's left of them. The only hope lies underground, where clones banished long ago may have regained fertility. A cyborg explorer is dropped into that endless labyrinth to find out. His capsule is shot down within minutes, his head torn from his body, and he has to rebuild himself from scrap as monsters swarm the dark.

Hori invented a whole gibberish language for his characters and shaped a world where rust, grime and deadpan comedy sit next to a strange tenderness. It's a treat for anyone who loves handmade animation with no digital gloss and isn't scared of the weird. Stream Junk Head (2022) online on iFILM.