Missing Halloween

Watch the video before you read the post; that way the post will make a lot more sense and there 

won't be any spoilers.

"Missing Halloween" is a short animation I found on YouTube. It is about a young boy who goes out trick-or-treating with a young girl. As the story progresses, we learn that nobody but the boy can see the girl, and this makes him confused. When he returns home, he is given the diagnosis of an imaginary friend. This seems innocent enough, but at one point the boy follows the girl past a fence labeled "danger", where we see a multitude of animal traps scattered about a forest. The boy, trying to keep up with his 'friend', missteps and the screen goes white. It then cuts to a scene where the boy finds the girl sitting beneath a tree in a clearing, and sits down beside her. When the animation resumes, a police squadron is looking for the boy and they come across him. What's creepy is he is found sitting next to a decaying corpse- the corpse of the girl he 'befriended', who had gone missing.

This animation is both charming and disturbing. When it begins, the audience is drawn into the simplistic, adorable character designs and black-and-white coloration, as well as the warm, inviting feel of the animation style. It feels almost like watching a memory or silent film. Speaking of silent, the entire film, up until the ending, is silent, with only the calming, hypnotic background music filling the silence. The ending, though, has speaking, albeit very little and not entirely comprehensible. It also has sound effects but lacks the soundtrack used earlier. In my opinion, this was done intentionally. As the entire story except the ending is seen through the point of view of an imaginative, energy, and lonely young boy, the beginning is done so we feel like we are watching a memory or a story that perhaps the boy himself came up with. It feels very much nostalgic and hazy, as if it were meant to be up to various interpretations. The ending, on the other hand, plays out as we would see it in real life; with sound effects, speech, and without background music. It is told from the point of view of adults. By portraying the ending in such a manner, they contrast the difference between the two and label the beginning as a fantasy and the ending as the unwanted reality.

My personal interpretation of the animation is that the girl is dead and that the boy is dying. Since nobody can see the girl, she must be a ghost, but the boy can still see and interact with her, so he isn't entirely human (or he has some unseen ability to interact with the dead). Plus, throughout the animation, he has a mobile devil tail, but only in the present Halloween, so his current state is only recent. Devils are usually interpreted as a symbol or beacon of death, so the boy is dying. But because he is still seen by everybody else, and still shows up on film, he is not dead yet. The girl is shown to be dead; her corpse is rotting and only the boy can see her ghost.

I believe that the girl is lonely and wants a friend, so she tries to lead the boy into the traps in hopes he dies- the same way she died. The candy wrappers that are shared between the two always read 'you found me' for the girl, which means that she was waiting a while for a friend, and her corpse shows this as well- it has begun to decompose and has maggots and flies. The boy, who is oblivious to the fact she is dead, is also lonely, so a friend, even if nobody else can see them, is very appreciated. In the end, when he catches up with the girl and sits down beside her beneath the tree, his candy wrapper reads 'I found you' and hers, like always, reads 'you found me'. Even though these actions ultimately killed him, the boy found a friend in the girl and the girl found a friend in the boy.

Overall, this is a very well-done and thought-provoking animated gem, and despite its bittersweet ending, you will fall in love with it.


video used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaoVpVXcZsA