Viewer Rating
Combines user and critic ratings from four sources
Mystery, Animation, Horror • 1982 • 15 min

Jan Svankmajer's 15-minute stop-motion adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's classic horror tale follows a visitor to the crumbling Usher estate, where a brother and sister succumb to inherited madness and decay. The label Leans Traditional reflects what the film lacks as much as what it contains. There are no progressive identity themes, no social critique, and no modern reframing of the source material. Svankmajer stays faithful to Poe's 19th-century gothic sensibility, letting inanimate objects and surreal imagery carry the dread. The family portrayed is dysfunctional to the point of extinction, but that darkness serves the original story's logic rather than any contemporary agenda.
Petr Cepek
Jan Svankmajer's 15-minute stop-motion adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's classic horror tale follows a visitor to the crumbling Usher estate, where a brother and sister succumb to inherited madness and decay. The label Leans Traditional reflects what the film lacks as much as what it contains. There are no progressive identity themes, no social critique, and no modern reframing of the source material. Svankmajer stays faithful to Poe's 19th-century gothic sensibility, letting inanimate objects and surreal imagery carry the dread. The family portrayed is dysfunctional to the point of extinction, but that darkness serves the original story's logic rather than any contemporary agenda.
Petr Cepek
The film's exploration of psychological decay, madness, and isolation through a surreal and abstract lens is primarily existential and artistic, not explicitly promoting or critiquing specific political ideologies or offering a political solution.
This stop-motion animated film, an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's story, features a single live-action actor and primarily inanimate objects and puppets. The film's artistic focus is on surreal psychological horror and decay, without engaging in DEI themes or offering social critiques of traditional identities.
The film portrays the extreme decay and ultimate extinction of an isolated, dysfunctional family line, focusing on inherited madness and the absence of healthy relationships or community, without endorsing or critiquing specific family norms.
Jan Svankmajer's experimental stop-motion adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's short story does not feature any identifiable LGBTQ+ characters or themes. The narrative focuses on the psychological decay of Roderick Usher, his sister Madeline, and their ancestral home, without incorporating elements related to sexual orientation or gender identity.
The film does not feature any identifiable transsexual characters or themes. It is an abstract, experimental stop-motion animation that interprets Edgar Allan Poe's story through surreal imagery, focusing on themes of decay, madness, and the psychological impact of an environment. The narrative lacks human characters and does not explore identity in a way that would include transsexual portrayals.
The movie does not contain any action or adventure elements.
The film adapts Edgar Allan Poe's short story. The primary characters—the narrator, Roderick Usher, and Madeline Usher—retain their established genders from the original literary work. No character canonically or historically established as one gender is portrayed as a different gender.
The film utilizes abstract stop-motion animation to depict its characters, rather than human actors. Therefore, there is no instance of a character established as one race being portrayed on screen as a different race.
Not depicted in the film.
Combines user and critic ratings from four sources





















