[NSFW] In the Future, Humans Mate with Jellyfish and It's Hard to Describe What Happens Next (Without Vomiting)

The cost of immortality is a tendency toward brutal sex á la the Japanese tradition of Guro in French animator Jeanne Boukraa's newly-released animation, With Joy and Merriness. In fact, all everyday activities have devolved into depravity and violence, from Mom chopping vegetables and kids playing jump rope to some of the most savage bedroom scenes we've seen since the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

The film's premise is that humanity spliced our genes with those of an undying jellyfish. Once we couldn't die, we became completely desensitized to the value of human life. Boukraa bills the film as an "experimental documentary where we observe, through every day scenes, the degeneration of a society where the rise of technology leeds the population to the biggest dream of all men: immortality."

Boukraa's process starts with paper and a thin pencil, which she uses to quickly scrawl the ideas spilling out of her head in fine detail. Then she uses Photoshop to fill out the backgrounds, animates in TV paint, and composites with AfterEffects. "For this film I got a lot of inspiration from old illustrations between 1920 and 1950, old shopping catalogs, education manuals," she tells Creators. "I was really interested in what they represent, the quest for happiness, a good education, a nice family life in the 'American way of life' style. This overabundance of good feelings often creates an artificial almost creepy aspect."

The French filmmaker graduated in 2014 with a Masters from Ensav la Cambre, a Brussels architecture and visual arts school. With Joy and Merriness is a her thesis film, which took a year of research and five months of animation to complete. Now it's been published after winning awards at Glas Festival, Festival D'Angers, BSFF, Anibar Film Festival, Insomnia Festival Russia, and more. Her previous short film, Satan La Bite, is equally sexually charged and disturbing, following a group of horny French school kids tricked into coming to church by a group of nuns—with fatal results.

With Joy and Merriness takes Boukraa's fascination with the libido into the future, fusing it with booming overtones of casual cruelty. It starts with accidents simple acts of aggression, but quickly mutates, like the human genome, into an spectacular bastardization of all societal rituals. "I'm using violent pictures and repulsive scenes to show the audience my immortal characters trying to kill themselves," she says. "I like this paradox. I want the audience to realize the destructive side of immortality and how important it is to always have a choice between life and death. I needed to visually push this idea at its extreme in order to create an uneasy feeling in the audience, I used violence to highlight my idea."

With that in mind, it's fascinating to watch the world she creates erupt into bioengineered flames.

Check out the full film below:

See more of Jeanne Boukraa's films on Vimeo and illustration on her website.

Related:

A Short Animation Bends Dimensions in Its Depiction of Family Drama

'Cream' Is the Grotesque, Lactose-Filled Thriller You Didn't Know You Wanted

This Short Animation Will Make You Quit Your Job