So it is Black Friday and I went to Comic World in Dubuque to partake in the sale on back issues. I started talking with Ben, the owner, who was working the front of the store. We were discussing some of the movies I had watched recently, and i came around to talking about Rumours, which was totally crazy, a black comedy with some of the craziest stuff in it I had seen in a long time.

This led Ben to bring up a short that he called a ‘college’ short film, giving me a quick synopsis of the film. He mentioned a chicken moving next door to a guy. It certainly fit in with the weird films we were talking about (yes, we even mentioned Beau is Afraid).

Ben told me that it was available in full on YouTube, so I decided that I was curious to see what this comedy was and how I felt about it.

The film centered around a man named Paul Wilson (Paul Hungerford) who had a chicken move next door to him, and the chicken began tormenting him. Calling him Moriarty, the chicken, named Pembroke Arbaghast (voiced by Brian Carr), was trying not so subtle things to kill his new neighbor… or at least so Paul thought.

When his poker friends died from poisoned chimichangas, Paul decided that he had to do something to stop the chicken’s crazed spree.

This was hilarious. I loved this short. It was so funny and well presented. The key to something like this is to present it in all seriousness, despite it being totally ridiculous. Paul was really scared and bothered by the foul creature and so the silliness of the situation became funny instead of stupid.

It seemed as if every time the chicken was shown, I was laughing, because of its look, and yet, I found a lot of this to be fairly sinister. The puppeteers did a wonderful job making this chicken believable with its playing poker, driving or sending threatening emails.

The final confrontation between man and bird was excellent too. This was a lot of fun and definitely worth the time. The twist at the end was funny too.

The acting was very solid. In particular, Paul Hungerford delivers a strong performance. You are convinced that he is scared of this chicken and that he legitimately is afraid for his life.

This goes to show you how a creative mind can take even the weirdest of concepts and turn it into an entertaining film. Hate* [* A Comedy] was well worth the 22-minutes it took to watch it, available on YouTube, but do not forget the asterisk when searching.