Burberry returns to us with another well-choreographed film. Written by Guillaume Humery and directed by Megaforce, "Night Creatures" opens with a trio of friends arguing about a sci-fi flick they've just watched. Aptly for our times, it's a remake, which may be the most dystopian touch in this work.
The bus grinds to an abrupt halt, and people spill out into the night streets. There's a groaning in the air. The friends find themselves alone, facing a glowing concrete pillar that appears sentient. It suddenly grips them like little wolf cubs. Pulled backward, their feet scrape against pavement, and the dance begins.
There's a ton of references here, from War of the Worlds to Nope, which YouTubers have observed already. What makes "Night Creatures" special is its fairy-tale quality, some kiss of the 12 Dancing Princesses, mingled with that sense of magical possibility shared by urban night rovers.
We don't have fairies and fantastical monsters anymore; we have electromagnetic waves and concrete. Burberry makes the case that even our stone-corseted habitats can possess animist qualities, and the "creatures" among which we indifferently move by day may long not only to dance, but be beheld by us. In one breath-stopping instant, the central node of this giant stone spider faces the friends and appears to breathe, like a dragon, before sweeping them back into choreography.
When the film ends, the performers—credited as Yom—are drawn onto the river, where they rest on the creature's back as it glides sinuously toward London's Tower Bridge. There's silence between them now, no reviews left to make.
Burberry's last dancing film, "Open Spaces," also directed by Megaforce, came out last year around this time and also featured a trio. In it, they danced in the countryside before, buffeted by a strong wind, they're sent spinning over a cliff in a tight formation, like a human comet. The year before, "Singin' in the Rain" found its dancers on Pettycoat Lane outside a kebab shop, where they danced with bursts of hail before one of the dancers leaps into the chilly river.
CREDITS
Client
Client: Burberry
VP Creative: Al Watts
Assistant Art Director: Louis Gabriel
Lead Producer: Will Preston-George
Chief Marketing Officer: Rod Manley
Chief Executive Officer: Jonathan Akeroyd
Senior Art Director: Sean Bell
Art Director: Harry Bradbury
Director of Product Management: Nicole Cobble
Head of Post Production & CGI: Luke Stazaker
Senior Music Manager: Morell Maison
Head of Production: Justyna Nowacka
Senior Producer: Rory Mills
Producer: Chloe Stevens
Project Manager: Iqrab Habib
Creative Production & Agency
Creative Production: RIFF RAFF FILMS
Creative & Direction: Megaforce
Executive Producer: Matthew Fone
Producers: James Waters, Matthew Fone, Tracey Cooper
Production Managers: Davina Abrahams
Production Assistants: Patch Wadsworth, Ellie De Rose
1st AD: Chris Kelly
2nd ADs: Lucy Kelly, Jess Horne
DOP: Mauro Chiarello
Choreographer: (LA)HORDE, Arthur Harel
Choreographer Assistant: Vito Giotta
Casting Director UK: Kharmel Cochrane Casting
Casting Director FR: Nohmad Casting
Talent: Alanna Archibald, Joshua Burnett-B, Nonoka Kato
Editorial
Edit Producer: Charlie Dalton
Editor: Rich Orrick @ Work Editorial
l Edit Assistant: Rain Keene
VFX
VFX: The Mill
Managing Director: Jonathan Davies
Executive Creative Director/2D Lead: Alex Lovejoy
VFX Supervisor/CG Lead: Will Laban
Animation Lead: Marion Strunck
Senior VFX Producers: Grace Thorpe, Saskia Delius
Lead Compositors: Leanne Pletersky, Mithun Jacob, Sabanayagam Veerasekaran, Guy Lubin, Vipin Tripathi
Animation: David Bryan, Clementine Supiot, Laurie Estampes
CG Lighting: Elia Goetlicher, Jack Enever, Stephan Haidacher, Fernando Tortosa, Alesandro Granella, Guilhelm Bergon, Tanjia Ljubimtseva
CG FX: Platon Filimonov, Emre Sumner Lead Concept/Modelling Lead: Silvia Bartoli CG Rigging: Maximilian Mallmann
Colour
Colour: The Mill
Colourists: Emiliano Serantoni / Maruf Khan
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