An inner-city youth is haunted by neglect in The Wraith of Cobble Hill. © Adam Parrish King.

The Wraith of Cobble Hill
You know it’s effective dramaturgy if you’re watching a character do A and you feel like shouting, “No, schmuck, do B!” Such is the effect of The Wraith of Cobble Hill, a recent short from USC that’s set in the Brooklyn neighborhood of the same name. The short centers around Felix, an African-American youth whose father is AWOL and whose mother can’t face the responsibilities of daily life.

The pair live in an apartment directly below Mr. H, the manager of a local convenience store. Waking one morning to the sound of Mr. H playing a vintage Polish ballad on 78rpm, Felix checks the refrigerator for breakfast. It’s completely bare. Mom is watching TV next to an open bottle, so Felix splits. He arrives at Mr. H’s store sullen and hungry, and he successfully shoplifts a Nutty Chocolate Log. He tries pocketing a comic book too, and when Mr. H inconveniently looks in his direction he starts a panic conversation to cover himself, at the end of which Mr. H makes the unexpected proposition that Felix take care of the store for two weeks while he takes a holiday. The store has a rat problem, and H has a dog named Mitzi that lives in the store all the time and is supposed to keep them at bay. She needs looking after, and because it means getting a key to the store, Felix agrees.

As soon as H is safely away on vacation, Felix and two of his homies unlock the back door and help themselves to whatever they think won’t be noticed. Mitzi is an ancient but contented beast, who, it turns out, is completely uninterested in hunting vermin. On their way out, Felix does notice Mitzi, who wags her tail and whines noncommittally, but he doesn’t so much as pat her head, never mind leaving food in her empty bowl.

The boys scale the fire escape outside their building on their way to a rooftop stolen-goods picnic, and on the way Felix thinks he sees something moving in the window of Mr. H’s apartment. H had been crying earlier, sobbing quietly and cradling a broken pair of glasses. But now Felix can’t see a sign of life, just a picture on the wall, one that sadly explains the significance of the glasses. They continue to the roof, crack open their brewskis and toast Mr. H in absentia.

On his second trip to the store Felix comes alone, takes more TV dinners and comicbooks, and yet again almost leaves without attending to Mitzi. But after a maddeningly long beat, he does finally open a bag of dog food and replenish the dish. At home watching TV and avoiding conversation with Mom, he thinks he hears some commotion upstairs, but it isn’t until later, alone in bed with a comicbook, that he definitely hears the record on the record player, the furniture dragging along the floor and the sudden and ominous crash.

When he’s made another trip up the fire escape to confirm the awful truth through the window, Felix makes one last trip to the convenience store. The rats are out in full force now. Felix looks at the empty glow of light through the window behind the register where Mr. H used to stand, he looks at the dog, and he makes the decision that circumstance has been setting him up to make for much longer than two weeks.

The Wraith of Cobble Hill is animated in a style so imitative of reality that the purist in me does wonder — why was this animated at all? But never mind — drama trumps all in a dramatic medium, so it’s hard to fault technique when the results are this good. The set design and cinematography suggest a dream memory of Brooklyn rather than the real thing, which is appropriate for a dramatic universe containing only six people (one of whom is already dead when the action begins). And the animation is superb; the characters are stop-motion armatures with minimal mouth and eye articulations, and writer/director/animator Adam Parrish King delivers all the necessary acting beats with smooth assurance. (The fluidity is truly amazing; technology-wise, this short may be one of the best advertisements yet for Frame Thief.)

The power of Wraith comes from the minimal movement, expert timing and, especially, the strong writing and voice characterization. So many moments linger — how Felix automatically censors his own profanity mid-word to say “sh…tuff” when he’s in the presence of an adult; the particular whine of a dog who doesn’t mind being alone but who wouldn’t say no to some company; the single seam of water damage running down the plaster in Felix’s room. The kicker, as always, is the details; and in an animating process stretching over a half a decade, King has deployed six years worth of them.

Taylor Jessen is a writer living in Burbank, California’s beloved City by the Bay (and the Bruckheimer). His article on the making of Twice Upon a Time will appear in Animation Blast magazine very soon indeed.