THE FOREST KING
Is a cautionary tale about a father's race against time to save his teenage son from the clutches of a VR game.
It is part of the Red Iron Road Series (2022), a six episode animated horror anthology based on Eastern-European folk tales.
Set in a suffocating smart-city dystopia, a boy's desire for status and acceptance leads him into a terrifying and deadly new reality through the lens of a mysterious game.
His desperate father must now race against time and technology to save his dying son. But the boy is the only one who can save himself, and he must do so before becoming another faceless pawn of the Forest King.
Adapted from the poem "The Forest Tsar" written in 1818 by Vasiliy Zhukovsky.
Originating as a Scandinavian myth, Erlkonig tells the tale of a young boy and his father as they travel home through the woods on horseback on a stormy evening. The son is troubled by a supernatural being called the evil Elf-King, who tempts children and takes their souls.
Turned into a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and composed as a ballad by Schiller — Erlkonig was later interpreted by Vasiliy Zhukovsky as The Forest Tsar.
Continuing this storytelling lineage, Lubomir has adapted the poem through a modern lens, while remaining faithful to the tradition of the cautionary tale. Here, the soul possession of old, becomes the siphoning of consciousness into the digital realm, and the ghoulish entities of the woods, become sprites in a VR game.
Through its retelling, he explores the many social phenomena of ideological possession, the disavowal of free will, obedience in return for social favor, and the perils of living with morals and integrity in a degenerate society.
