I really liked this short film. It had a very eerie and frightening feel to it with a little bit of dark humor, in my opinion. The film starts by showing us a mother sitting in a chair doing embroidery work while her son is walking around in circles beating a drum hanging around his neck and a cuckoo clock was audibly ticking as the son’s bedtime was approaching. It seemed as if all three motions were acting at the same exact time. The mother’s sewing was in time with the boy’s drumming and those were both time with the ticking of the clock. His bedtime is announced by the cuckoo clock chiming ten (?) times. To add to the eeriness, the “cuckoo” of the clock is actually a skeleton, possible foreshadowing what is to come. The boy then reluctantly goes up a series of stairs to his room. On his way up, he encounters a creaky stair, at which he pauses and takes a noticeably longer time to pass the stair. We don’t know it yet, but the ominous figure that is the Sandman will pause at this same step later on in the film.

Speeding ahead, the boy is in his room, thinks someone is coming in, the audience thinks it is the Sandman because we see the Sandman coming up the stairs, and we are surprised by the fact that the person that enters the room is the boy’s mother. She tucks him in, kisses his head, and closes his eyes, providing him and us with a sense of false hope, comfort, and serenity. Moments later, the Sandman bursts through the door of the boy’s room and tries to frighten him. In my opinion, the film has bits of humor dispersed throughout. For instance, the Sandman tries to wake the child and frighten him but is unable to because he is sound asleep. It is almost like they are playing tag or something. Every time the Sandman is in the boy’s field of vision, the boy has his eyes closed. This goes on for about a minute or two. The boy is tossing and turning and the Sandman keeps on moving around to be in front of the boy. I think the humor makes the film even more frightening. We are presented with a form of humor only to then be disgusted and terrified when we see that the Sandman eventually extracts the boy’s eyes, brings them with him back to the moon, and feeds his children. What’s more, this isn’t even the first time. There is a collection of eyeless boys shown after the credits begin to roll at the end of the film.