While babysitting her newborn sister, a young astronomer struggles with a dark thought after encountering something eerie in the night sky

Anyone who’s had a child knows the strenuous difficulties of the first few months. The thoughts in This Dark Thought may not be as uncommon as you think. But Kris and Kurtis Theorin brought some original twists to the parental struggles. For starters, we step away from the parents, and look at an older sister’s point of view for this story. But even more strikingly comes the film’s unique visual animated style.

The film is based on an award winning short screenplay written by Nik Theorin. Kris and Kurtis Theorin directed the film, the animation was done by Actuality Films using artists from around the world. In order to clearly communicate what we were looking for in animation we created a live action animatic with actress Evangeline Young (watch video below). We wanted to create a film that had an ambiguous supernatural component while also having a unique visual style. Being fans of the psychological horror genre, we all really liked the script Nik wrote and decided that it would make a memorable short film. The original soundtrack was written by Nick Angeloni with an additional original song by Olivia Dalessandro.

The team at Something’s Awry Productions hasn’t shied away from bringing us creative shorts in the past, like The Sundae Grind and Mary & Marsha in The Manor of Madness. But ‘This Dark Thought’ stands out in its own unique way with hand-drawn animation following a live action animatic.