Every day during October, the Department of Tangents presents a different short film for the Daily Horror Film Fest. It can be flat-out scary, funny horror, or something for your Saturday morning cartoon watching. Except today’s entry, In the Tall Grass, directed by Alexii Muftoll with art and design from Nadia Dubijansky, isn’t your happy, normal cartoon fare.

A man has trapped himself inside his apartment and inside his own head. Everything seems to knock him off kilter – reports on the radio, the neighbor kid playing in the hall. He is permanently disoriented and distrustful. And when he needs to escape, it’s not easy to tell where he thinks he’s going. But something sinister has certainly happened.

The shot perspectives feed into that sense of disorientation. Sometime we get the lead character’s perspective, sometimes we’re watching him. Same goes for the movement. Every twitch of the eye or indrawn breath indicates something has gone wrong. Everything in this world has an ominous overtone – even the grass looks less soothing than spiked, ready to gouge anyone foolish enough to run barefoot.

And… what’s with the shoes?