It’s a good day to be Netflix. Not only has the streaming service just announced that it will be hosting nearly the entire Studio Ghibli catalogue outside of Japan and the USA/Canada, mere hours later it’s become the home of an entirely-unannounced David Lynch short film. The director has just debuted a brand new 17-minute film titled What Did Jack Do? on Netflix – you can watch it right now, right here.
The film is shot entirely in scratchy black-and-white, and features Lynch himself as a detective, interrogating the ‘Jack’ of the title in regards to a murder investigation. The twist? Jack is a cute little monkey wearing a tiny suit. And he talks. Yes, David Lynch just made a talking monkey movie. It is, as you’d expect from Lynch, extremely weird, oddly funny, and genuinely quite unsettling – and the finale? Well, we’ll leave you to experience it for yourself, but it’s easily one of the strangest things you’ll see today.
The film – which includes Lynch interrogating the monkey with hardball lines like, “Now you listen, you’ve been seen with chickens, associating with chickens” – is written, directed, and edited by Lynch. It’s unknown who voices the monkey (‘Jack Cruz’ is credited as ‘himself’), but it wouldn’t be a stretch to guess that that’s Lynch too. Having previously directed the 18-episode stretch of Twin Peaks: The Return, this 17-minute mini-feature proves he isn’t done experimenting with form and length yet. Fans waiting for his next film project can enjoy What Did Jack Do? for the meantime – and bask in a world where a surprise Lynch joint can be sprung up on the internet before anyone knew it existed.