'God Is Shy' by Jocelyn Charles (2025): Film Review

Illustration, story narration, dreams, and real waking life all become a thread of the same (horrifying) reality in the justly multiply-acclaimed French short 'God Is Shy' (Dieu est timide) by Jocelyn Charles. The French animation director, whose credits include design work on the Oscar-nominated animation features 'I Lost My Body' (Jérémy Clapin, 2019) and 'Arco' (2025, Ugo Bienveniste), teams up with Ugo Bienveniste and Félix de Givry (the Remembers). He gets his inspiration from the Korean supernatural horror film 'The Wailing' by Na Hong-jin (2016), as well as the 'Dr. Slump' manga by Akira Toriyama. Yet 'God Is Shy' weaves in many other references in the dialogue itself (including Stephen King's/Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining') to present a unique thread of ordinary reality silently becoming horrifying with a simple water splash.

The two main characters, the young Ariel and Paul, are illustrators on a train journey. Instead of narrating their biggest fright (which they distinguish from fear), they need to draw it. Suddenly, the person in their drawing comes alive as Gilda, their new co-passenger. Gilda gradually immerses them in her cosmic-horror marital story (bodies can still remember their Big Bang atomic structure); in the third act of the 15-minute film, her story directly affects the two young travelers.

Less visibly schlock-inducing than Charles' music video direction for 'HDIMYLM' by The Weeknd (watch it here), 'God Is Shy' shocks simply by the power of its words and situation-inducing. It looks as if simply saying the word -and drawing the picture- that the frightening situation will appear (in the same manner that, in a different mythology, Voldemort would appear more awesome being unnamed). Looking at your patriarchal past can be very intimidating, and the male in question has his own secrets not to be shared by the mortals. Women and their womb in their primordial situation here become the perfect frightening situation for Paul (whose biggest fright is to appear pregnant -as Ariel will remind him).

Animals, ducks, and mammals have their own way of playing in the film, mostly becoming silent participants when least expected; they bookend the start, and the beginning of 'God Is Shy' in the most implicit way. The strikes of blue in the anime-infused film are everywhere, like Kubrick's Xmas trees in ' Eyes Wide Shut' (1999), highlighting coldness and, again, the sea colors, which will be monumental in the film's process. Gilda (the bad apple) is carefully crafted as something between reality and a bad fairy tale, in both words and design. Charles doesn't make very grotesque-looking characters; he prefers scene lighting to do the work. The film also becomes more of a play of style and genre: are we watching a comically dark story, or is there something more? The suspense also flows from this uncertainty (whose character is the best candidate to be the object of fright).

Eyes become the catalyst for all worrisome situations here, but they don't dilate or exaggerate; they simply emote fear in a subtle way of animating. The whistling and almost timid soundtrack (by P.R2B) registers as a light, tiptoe exercise in a field of everyday horror. The subconscious plays a big part in the film (and shyness is mostly a euphemism for a very abusive G*d); the quest for knowledge and things beyond your reach are so deeply ingrained as bad in themselves, so that their form becomes one of "old naked people" -or, worse, old people who happen to travel alongside you on the train journey. A film that astutely plays with our primal fears and is designed like a European version of an exotic anime environment. The combination is horrific.

Vassilis Kroustallis