Cyriak's latest video turns a corny PSA from the 1940s into a thumping, surrealist nightmare

By Kevin Cortez | July 20, 2019 | 4:01pm

Aux Features Cyriak

Cyriak's latest video turns a corny PSA from the 1940s into a thumping, surrealist nightmare

Screenshot: Cyriak

UK-based freelance animator Cyriak is known for making some of YouTube’s freakiest animations, like cat-inspired Run the Jewels music video “Meowpurrdy” and “Baaa,” which features a sheep morphing into other, more evolved sheep with windmilling limbs. It’s pure, inspired madness.

His latest short “Breakfast” is equal parts endearing and terrifying. For one, it’s built around old footage of a sweet man named Richard Massingham who used to star in old public information films in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Cyriak introduces Massingham as just some guy trying to to cross the road, despite the fact that, soon after his intro, Massingham spends a bulk of the video sitting at a little foldable table eating his breakfast on the street for no apparent reason.

Most Popular

But, as the creepiness sets in and Cyriak blasts some of his traditional manic electronic music, Massingham gets rammed by an old car and his breakfast is knocked into the street. Oh no! And then it happens again. And again. And again, but this time with an endless sea of Massinghams and folding tables. And then he gets swallowed by a monster made up of hundreds of his folding tables and piles of breakfast, which then morphs its body to create a face with a human-like mouth and set of eyes. Gross, but still kind of cute? In an uncanny valley kind of way.

Also, maybe this video isn’t about breakfast.

While that initial car accident is a charming kind of dull you can only find in corny educational videos, Cyriak’s warped way of looping an old man getting rammed by a car is pretty damn funny. That folding table monster swallowing up Massingham, though? Nightmare fuel.