The Chickening played the festival circuit over the past year, totally blowing the minds of audiences at Sundance, Fantastic Fest and more with its completely bonkers and inventive “remix” of footage from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Integrating chicken costumes, silly hats and faces, and the best possible manipulation of Shelley Duvall’s eyeballs you’re likely to see in your lifetime, The Chickening is an ode to insanity that you need to watch immediately.

Words like “insane” and “wacky” hardly do this short film justice. The brainchild (if you can call it that) of Canadian filmmakers Nick DenBoer and Davy Force, The Chickening takes some real nutty liberties with Kubrick’s horror masterpiece, transcending the gimmicky notion of mash-up pop culture to deliver the ultimate remix that runs Kubrick’s eerie work straight through the slaughterhouse. Combining the artfulness of Kubrick with dance music, mutants, chickens and corporate satire, The Chickening is a near-indescribable assault on the senses.

I first saw The Chickening when it was paired with Anders Thomas Jensen’s wild and surprisingly poignant Men & Chicken (starring a hare-lipped Mads Mikkelsen!) at Fantastic Fest last fall. Rumor had it that DenBoer and Force’s brain-melting short would probably never find anything resembling an official release due to rights issues (obviously), but The Chickening was unleashed over at Birth.Movies.Death this morning to the relief of all of us who have been dying for wider audiences to glimpse into the uncanny, cartoonish and totally INSANE valley that was previously only available to film festivals.

Head over to BMD for a chat with the filmmakers after you’ve watched the short above — if you can handle it.

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