Western Animation / Opal

We see you, Opal.

Something isn't right; nothing seems to make much sense to me...I know that something isn't right, nothing seems to make much sense to me...

—OPAL trailer

OPAL is a 2020 stop-motion animated short created by Jack Stauber for [adult swim] as one of their "smalls".

It follows the story of a young girl who (while living happily with her loving family) is haunted by the crying in her next-door neighbor's attic window, feeling lured toward it, and what ensues when she finally sneaks in and reaches it.

---

Tropes found in OPAL include:

• Abusive Parents: On multiple levels, too! Imagery strongly suggests that Claire's mother hits her daughter and possibly her husband, too. Meanwhile, the father, while never physically threatening Claire at any point, spends their entire scene together simultaneously talking to himself and putting her down, implying some degree of emotional abuse. And both of them are clearly guilty of Parental Neglect.
• Addled Addict: The mother is fond of alcohol and pills, looks physically harmed by heavy usage, and is shown to have hazy vision and slurred speech.
• All There in the Manual: It's a little hard to tell what's coming from the attic window, but the synopsis given on HBO Max and the official YouTube upload explains that it's crying for those who don't get it.
• Ambiguous Situation: The last few seconds of the mother's song, "Virtuous Cycle", show what looks like a flashback to a violent incident, with images of a barred window, hands carrying a phone while dialing 911, and someone yelling before having their head and face smashed in by someone off-camera. Given the moment is so brief and never touched upon again, it is difficult to tell whether the victim/aggressor in this incident was the mother or the father—-particularly as the latter's face is never clearly shown anywhere the film—-or even someone else in the mother's family, let alone what, if anything, provoked their attack to begin with.
• Bad Bedroom, Bad Life:
  • The mother's bedroom is extremely messy, as she only drinks and sleeps when she's not beating her daughter.
  • Opal then discovers that Claire improvised a bedroom in the attic, contempting herself of a pillow, a blanket, and a piece of white lace that could be interpreted as a Security Blanket in this dusty and empty room. The only light comes from the little window where she can watch Opal's Burgers billboard and imagine a more healthy life as the little girl of it.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • As Opal is eyeing her burger, her mother encourages her, seemingly to eat it. Opal instead picks up the burger and dances on her plate, to the cheers of her family.
  • When Opal gives the cigarettes to Claire's grandfather, Claire's grandfather gets suspicious of Opal because she's not talking; after smelling Opal, he concludes that Opal is not Claire and angrily demands that she leave his house. This seems to confirm that Opal and Claire are two different people, but with the ending that confirms Opal and Claire are the same person, this probably shows that the grandfather properly lost his sense of smell and was just confused that Claire wasn't talking.
  • Claire's mother begins to sing, implying a similar musical number as Claire's father and grandfather, only for the song to nightmarishly distort as a sequence of confusing visuals plays.
• Blood from the Mouth: At one point Claire's grandfather coughs up blood. Right as he says it's "evil to help people who don't need help", completely ignoring the fact he could use some.
• Body Motifs: Eyes. Opal has big eyes, Opal's family sings about their eyes, Claire's grandfather is blind, her father surrounds himself with mirrors to only look at himself, and her mother's vision is blurry. All of this contributes to themes of wanting to be seen and the idea of being unable or unwilling to face the truth.
• Bolivian Army Ending: Downplayed but still Played for Drama. The ending shows Claire locked in her room trying to retreat into her imaginary fantasy world. As she does, her real family is banging on the door trying to get her out. And then it just ends right there with no real resolution. We are never shown what happens to Claire at this point but, from what we know, it likely won't be very pleasant.
• Bookends: The short begins and ends with our main character serenaded with her mother, father and grandfather singing "We See You".
• Camp Straight: Claire's father is defined by vices commonly stereotyped as feminine, being vain with a flamboyant demeanor and catty attitude, and he even wears extensive makeup. However, he's married to a woman and there is no real implication that this is anything but what he wanted.
• Cute Mute: Opal/Claire doesn’t speak a word throughout the film, but she’s still oddly adorable.
• Daddy's Girl: Implied. Opal focuses on her father a bit more in the opening scene, and in the ending, the father is the one that boops her on the nose, to her delight. Meanwhile, Claire's father appears to be the lesser of the evils among her neglectful family. He's the only one of the three to not threaten Opal with physical violence, and his scene features warped attempts to talk to his daughter, a level of engagement which comes closer to healthy than the other two family members' dynamics with her. He and Opal also seem to have something in common with a shared wish to be "seen". Notably, Opal only leaves the father when she's running from the grandfather. Once you learn that Opal is Claire, it makes more sense why she would favor her father in the imaginary family.
• Darker and Edgier: Has a much heavier and less comedic tone than the previous Jack Stauber small, SHOP: A Pop Opera.
• Domestic Abuse: It's implied through Claire's mother's song. One shot shows a hand calling 911 on a phone, followed by a scene of the mom (or even potentially the father) smashing a beer bottle over someone's head. It's ambiguous whether she became an Addled Addict because of past trauma, has been physically abusive as well as neglectful, or both.
• Downer Ending: Claire is still stuck in her horrendous life, with her only comfort being an imaginary world based on a billboard across the window of the attic, which also happens to be her bedroom. The final shot has her in a Troubled Fetal Position, imagining her fake family once again as her real family relentlessly bangs on the door, trying to get her out, while the final shot zooms back out of her head and the house, confirming that Claire is fantasizing, she's living a horrible life, and that the billboard really is the only thing across the street.
• Dysfunctional Family: Claire's family. The grandfather is ailing, lazy, and lost in television, using Claire to perform tasks solely for his benefit. The father is a combination of horribly insecure and incredibly vain, spending all of his time damaging and attempting to repair his face and giving no real attention to his daughter, only using her as another mirror of sorts and always talking to himself even when he speaks to her. The mother is a substance abuser and the most physically violent of the three, wants to use Claire to take care of her, and uses alcohol and pills to avoid admitting her fault in an abuse incident in the past. As a result, this creates dysfunction in Claire as well—she spends much of her time retreated into a fantasy of a happy family, being unable to face her reality, and seems to have depressingly low standards for what a happy life should be as a result of her neglect.
• The Ending Changes Everything: The Wham Shot changes the opening of the short once you know that it's just a coping mechanism Claire uses to escape her horrible home life.
• Escapism: A very dark take on this trope, as everyone in the family that lives in the house across the street uses some form of escapism as a crutch to keep themselves distracted from their horrible lives:
  • The grandfather escapes by watching TV and smoking, both of which have left him incredibly unhealthy and overweight.
  • The father escapes by focusing only on his appearance, surrounding himself with mirrors that block others out and becoming incredibly judgmental of other people's looks.
  • The mother escapes by turning to drugs and alcohol, leaving her incredibly woozy and temperamental as she lazes in her room alone.
  • And, of course, there's the main character herself, who escapes by imagining that the family on the Opal's Burgers billboard is her own, locking herself in her room to spend time with them in a happier house instead of her neglectful real family.
• Eyeless Face: These two examples at the end of the short may be due to how Claire envisions them.
  • Behind his glasses, Claire's grandfather has no eyes. To show how he became dependent of Claire, her face replaces both his eyes.
  • A Freeze-Frame Bonus suggests Claire's father may have empty sockets...
• Eye Scream:
  • Claire's father is seen touching and manipulating his eyes during "Mirror Man", and at one point even applies makeup directly to his eye.
  • Easy to miss, but as Opal's father sings "It's not where your attention ought to be, Opal", he's spinning Opal's eyes around with his fingers.
• Faux Affably Evil: Though perhaps not quite evil so much as unwell, both of Claire's parents initially act soft, but it's quickly revealed they care very little about their daughter. It's especially notable in the father's case: while seemingly the most polite out of the family, his voice stays fairly chipper even when insulting her. As well, for his seeming effort to connect with Claire, he never actually looks at her.
• Foil: Opal's mother, father and grandfather are kind, caring, loving and noticing her, unlike Claire's who are addicted to their coping mechanisms and so have very little time for their own flesh and blood. It makes sense, as they represent what Claire wishes her parents and grandfather would be. The ideal mother's hands are also depicted behind her back out of view most of the time, in a tragic contrast to Claire's real mother, whose hands terrify Claire by grabbing her and threatening her with physical abuse. Also, the ideal father gives her genuine encouragement, unlike his real-world equivalent who only encourages himself.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The first thirty-seven seconds is a montage of items that Claire's family uses as a form of escapism, and they are sequenced in the same order they are introduced in the plot.
  • The title sequence has the camera panning out of a window and into Opal's house. By the end, we discover it's the same window that Claire looks out of to imagine her fake ideal family, including said house.
  • The structure of the montage followed by the view from the window echoes the fact that Claire escapes to her happy place after witnessing the adults' vices in action.
  • The first shot of Opal's father has his face locked in a strange expression until he switches to looking at the camera. The first expression on his face is the exact same one he makes on the Opal's Burgers billboard.
  • The first shot of Opal starts with her tightly closing her eyes while frowning, before opening her eyes to see her family. One of the last shots has her making the same expression during her Freak Out towards the end before retreating back into her imagination.
  • Inside Opal's house, there always seem to be four lights above everyone, which are also reflected in Opal's eyes. These are the lights from the burger billboard Claire stares at to form her fantasy of a happy family life.
  • When Opal sneaks into the scary house, she bolts inside after being startled by a light behind her. It's likely this was the billboard lights turning on, scaring Claire because she didn't yet want to face the reality of where she actually crossed the street from.
  • The grandfather freaks out once he focuses on Opal and realizes she isn't Claire. His entire song is about his blindness; he just assumed she was an intruder because she wasn't talking.
• Freak Out: Claire screams in agony as she is hit with the reality of her home life before escaping to her mental world again.
• Glamour Failure: Claire's father's voice frequently and suddenly turns extremely deep and ominous whenever Opal does something that draws his attention, or when he's projecting his own self-loathing onto her, only to instantly switch back to its usual high, soft tone seconds later.
• A God Am I: It's implied that the father's extremely warped vanity is slowly bleeding into thinking himself a divine being. "Mirror Man" has the lines "God is in my skin" and "crafting the world its next new savior".
• Hall of Mirrors: Not a literal instance of this trope, but the father's "reflection chamber" invokes it by having the disorienting visual effects of one: he sits amid a cluster of mirrors all tilted and positioned around his head in such a way that they reflect off one another, and most of them show only parts of his face at a time, making his actual features impossible to see.
• Here We Go Again!: Played for Drama. When we first see Claire as "Opal", she's making the same wrinkled face she does when she realizes how awful her home life is before relaxing as soon as she sees her dream family. By the end of the short it becomes evident that Claire has escaped to this fantasy before, and likely will do again, that the opening of the short followed another harrowing incident we weren't privy to, and that another incident will follow her necessary comeback to reality.
• Inverted Trope: The short film's setup of Opal spending time with her family happily for her to sneak off in the middle of the night into Claire's house is a tragic inversion of stories in which characters leave their real lives to visit a world that represents their minds on some level, such as The Wizard of Oz and Labyrinth. Here, Claire leaves her mind to tragically rediscover the reality she lives in, and her "return" is her choosing to retreat into her mind again.
• Irony:
  • Claire's grandfather is a couch potato who spends all day in front of the television despite being blind.
  • A brief glimpse of the father's face when the mirror spins and becomes Claire's face shows that his visage looks rotted and caved in, most likely from all his attempts to "fix" his appearance backfiring and leaving him severely disfigured.
• Leitmotif: A recurring set of piano notes representing the mystery of the house across the street makes its way into a few of the instrumental tracks. The end of the short brings it out in full force, with the piece also layering with the unique music heard in the trailer.
• Living Emotional Crutch: In a very dark deconstruction, all of Claire's family rely on her in some way to make themselves feel better, deliberately ignoring their actual issues. This is showcased visually near the end of the short, where there are three scenes showing objects that the members of the family use to escape turning into Claire. For the grandfather, it's his eyes, as he uses her to see and get him cigarettes. For the father, it's his mirror, as he compares himself to Claire in order to feel better about his appearance and only uses her as a reflection of himself. And for the mother, it's a pill, showing that she views Claire as someone who is there to take care of her rather than the other way around.
• Lyrical Dissonance:
  • "Easy to Breathe" is a catchy and upbeat tune about Claire's grandfather retreating into the world of television and envying how perfect everything sounds, ignoring that his smoking problem is at least half of the reason behind his poor health to begin with.
  • The father's song "Mirror Man" is the most energetic and fast-paced, and it even seems to imply that he shares his daughter's desire to be "seen"—but he tries to fulfill this desire by obsessively preening himself and neglecting his family in the process to some seriously self-destructive degrees. There's even a part during the song that shows him beating at his own skin until it bleeds.
• Manchild: While talking to Opal about how he feels himself becoming more and more beautiful all the time, Claire's father describes himself as feeling like a "small, growing thing," still becoming what he's meant to be. The irony that he's blind to, of course, is that as an adult talking to an actual child, he's grown about as much as he's likely to. And of course, the even darker irony is that he's talking to his own growing child, whom he neglects.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Opal stones are related to truth, and also sounds similar to "Opaque", as well as physically resembling milky blinded eyes. The truth is, Opal isn't real; she's an identity Claire has constructed in her daydreams to cloud herself from the horrible reality she suffers in.
  • Claire comes from the French word for "clear". Much of the short's symbolism revolves around sight, and who can or can't see clearly, and Claire is Opal's true identity within the awful reality of her life.
• Mistaken Identity: When Opal enters the mysterious house across the street, its adult inhabitants mistake her for a family member named Claire. The grandfather is blind, the father is screened off by a wall of mirrors, and the mother is in a drugs-and-alcohol-induced haze, so none of them realize the little girl who's entered their home isn't their (grand)daughter. Subverted and turned on its head with the reveal we have been watching Claire all along, and that "Opal" is a fantasy identity she constructed as a coping mechanism.
• Mythology Gag: Opal, the girl on the billboard, heavily resembles Abigail from Jack's earlier video "Cooking With Abigail".
• Narcissist: An entire family of them, and they're as miserable as expected. The grandfather has constructed a deluded fantasy that mass media somehow revolves around him, the father spends all of his time obsessing over his physical flaws, trying to fix his appearance, and attempting to talk himself up, and the mother is an amorous type due to her obsession with someone who looks like her idealized version of herself. Even the main character has shades of narcissism, mainly due to the lack of proper care and affection in her life, causing her to construct a fantasy in which her family obsesses over her.
• Never My Fault: A common thread between the adults in Claire's life.
  • Despite her own culpability in her family's suffering, Claire's mother immediately corrects herself just shy of admitting to any fault, saying, "I feel terrible for all the things... I feel terrible."
  • After Claire's father casually puts down her appearance, he immediately follows it up with "Never mind, sorry, my brain" as if he just can't help himself.
• Parental Neglect: Claire's nominal caretakers are each wrapped up in their own worlds, and none of them are especially concerned about her health or well-being. Each of them only cares about using her to facilitate their retreat from the real world and the consequences of their actions. The result is Claire latching onto a billboard for a burger joint across the street and fantasizing that she's the little girl on the billboard because the poor girl just wants to be acknowledged as a person.
• Reflective Eyes:
  • The main character's large eyes have a tendency to reflect things, most notably the eerie attic window.
  • This is also the case when Claire is in the fake world with the other family, with their eyes reflecting the 4 lights on the billboard.
• Shadow Archetype: All three of Claire's caretakers are this to Claire herself; Grandfather singing about how much he loves "the girls" on TV complimenting him, Father's obsession with beauty, and Mother's song about needing a baby to fuss over all indicate they want to be "seen" just as much as Claire does, but they've lost themselves in their vices and their desire to be seen has become deeply corrupted.
• Smoking Is Not Cool: The grandfather is shown to be a smoker, which causes him to cough severely and his song makes mentions of his breathing issues caused by it.
• Stepford Smiler: Claire's father is the most overtly cheerful member of the household, but it does nothing to disguise the fact that he's a shallow, childish narcissist who is just as incapable of taking responsibility for his actions as any of the other adults in the family and has to constantly put down his daughter's appearance to feel better about his own.
• Stereotype Flip: Claire's father and mother are both abusive to her, but in ways you wouldn't normally expect for their genders: the father is a vain Narcissist, while the mother is a violent drunk.
• Surreal Horror: The general feel of the entire short mixes uncanny visuals with the disturbing characters Opal meets.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: Various shots throughout the film show the mother's hazy, drunken vision and warped perspective; the father's visual delusions of grandeur; and the (blind) grandfather's imaginings of the women he listens to on TV as lips with thin, glittering bodies of static. And given the ending, the entire short is likely Claire's damaged perspective.
• Uncanny Valley: The entire short treads the line between subtle and visceral discomfort, but special mention goes to Opal's family, good lord. Their gazing eyes, wide mouths with real teeth, juxtaposed with their live-action bodies is enough to make anyone squirm. Justified, considering they're just pictures on a billboard.
• The Voiceless: Opal doesn't speak at all in the entire short, with the only sounds she makes being a few screams, the last one happening during The Reveal that she is actually the miserable Claire.
• Wham Shot: When Opal finally reaches the attic, nobody is there, so she walks through the room, only finding a pillow, a blanket and white lace among the dust, then looks out the window from to her house. She finds a billboard of Opal's Burgers that shows her "family" from the beginning of the short in its place, except with a different girl in the middle who vaguely looks like her; it reveals that "Opal" is Claire who built a fantasy world of a happy family life around it to escape from her neglectful family members.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Opal braves an abusive home because she wants to make a friend out of whoever's crying in the house across the street. At the very end, she horrifyingly realizes there is no friend. She has always been a member of this abusive family, and she is the one crying.

---