Client: Sky Originals / Story Films / Archface Films
Director: Otto Baxter
Producers: Daisy Allsop / Peter Beard / Bruce Fletcher           

A unique project from Sky Studios - Puppet Asylum is a 30minute short film set in Victorian London, plus a feature documentary on it’s making of. This is the first original commission of this scale, written and directed by a person with Down Syndrome. An allegorical, musical, horror biopic written and directed by Otto Baxter as a reimagining of his own life, from birth to becoming his own master. The unpredictable tale, straight from Otto’s anarchic mind, charts Otto’s birth as a horned baby in a blood-splattered morgue, through his wayward teens, to his years in captivity in the ‘Puppet Asylum’ at the mercy of the evil Master. 

Fusing horror, dark comedy, an evocative soundtrack and a foul-mouthed ventriloquist’s dummy, THE PUPPET ASYLUM is a macabre story of a misunderstood child on a path to controlling their own life. Capture was commissioned to create opening and end credit title deisgn plus in film content graphics of old victorian newspapers. The design relfects a key influence - The classic of German expressionism; The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.

The film stars Paul Kaye, Otto Baxter, Ruben Reuter, Rebecca Callard, Myanna Buring, with Dexter Fletcher and Adeel Akhtar, and score by Ed Harcourt.