Web Animation / There's a Man in the Woods

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"There's a Man in the Woods" is a web animation by Jacob Streilein, made in 2014.

The story is narrated by a former school teacher, who tells the audience the story of how he got fired. Every day, the children of the school would go out to the bushes at the edge of the woods near the school and eat the honeysuckle. One child named Sid, however, doesn't want to share the flowers, so he claims that he saw a man in the woods. The teacher knows that Sid is lying, but as he can’t do anything except try to stop the rumor, the story grows before getting back to the parents. Things get darker from there...

The video can be found here on Vimeo, and here on Newgrounds.

There's A Man In The Woods contains examples of:

• Addled Addict: The teacher becomes addicted to alcohol and cocaine after being fired from his job.
• Adults Are Useless: The teacher tried to reassure the kids that everything was safe, but the other adults aren't willing to take any action besides blaming him. Also deconstructed, as it shows the more realistic consequences of high position adults refusing to take legitimate action.
• Ambiguous Ending: The short ends on a shot of the teacher coming out of the woods to face Sid, reaching into his pocket for something. It's heavily implied that the teacher intends on killing Sid for revenge, but ultimately it's left up to interpretation.
• Asshole Victim: It's heavily implied that Sid is about to be murdered by the teacher in the ending, but it's hard to feel sorry for him after what he did.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: The Teacher tried to convince the students, parents, and staff that there was no "man in the woods," but gets blamed and fired for it. After becoming an addict and reaching rock bottom, he drives to his school through the woods and becomes "the man in the woods."
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Sid started the lie (which ruined the Teacher's life) all so he could have the honeysuckle to himself. He gets it, but the Teacher has become the "man in the woods" with the likely intent to murder him. Since everyone else has been scared off, Sid is completely alone to face the Teacher's wrath.
• Beware the Nice Ones: The teacher was a Cool Old Guy who, in the end, is possibly going to kill Sid for ruining his life.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Sid pretends to act all sweet and innocent when he said, "There's a man in the woods." But the audience and the Teacher knows he's just lying to get the honeysuckle to himself.
• Bookends:
  • The title is said at the start and end, but the latter is more terrifying.
  • Someone is sucking a honeysuckle flower.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Even the Teacher narrates Sid as an "obnoxious kid." And is he ever. He tells his classmates terrifying stories of a dangerous man in the forest so that he won't have to share the honeysuckle nectar. Though probably he didn't expect the Teacher to get fired, it doesn't seem to bother him as long as he gets what he wants.
• Break the Cutie: Happens to the teacher over the course of the short with the lie spreading.
• Broken Ace: The Teacher was a friendly, Cool Old Guy who genuinely loved his job and was competent at it. Too bad Sid's lies ruin his reputation.
• Cassandra Truth: Try as he might, the teacher can't convince the children that Sid is lying. And things only get worse when his fellow adults won't believe him either...
• Cool Old Guy: The teacher appears to be in late forties or early fifties and was quite the friendly, Cool Teacher. Then, the lie...
• Cool Teacher: If letting the children pick honeysuckles was any indication, the teacher used to be one of these before Sid's lies turned him into the bitter cynic he's become.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: If the Teacher, the PTA, or Sid's mother had simply called Sid's bluff and told the police of his claim, Sid would've been exposed as a liar, the Teacher either would've been vindicated or never would've gotten in trouble to begin with, and the Teacher wouldn't have most likely murdered Sid.
• Create Your Own Villain: Sid's lie tarnishes his teacher's reputation to the point where the latter decides to become the man in the woods and come after the little boy.
• Death Glare: When the teacher corners Sid, his face is etched into a sculpture of absolute hatred.
• Death of a Child: The furious teacher is just a second away from murdering a fearful Sid at the end of the short, reaching into his coat to pull something out.
• Don't Go in the Woods: Invoked by Sid, who makes up a lie about there being a murderer in the woods next to the school so he can have the honeysuckle bush at the edge of the woods all to himself. His lie snowballs into a moral panic that ends up getting the teacher fired for not doing enough to protect the kids from the nonexistent killer (as if that's his job and not the job of the police), all while the teacher's claims that Sid is lying fall on deaf ears. The unjustly slandered teacher turns from a nice guy into a bitter addict, and eventually decides that if everybody else is going to play along with Sid's lie, then so will he... by making it true.
• Downer Ending: Despite his efforts to convince people otherwise, the teacher winds up getting fired, blacklisted, implied to have been forced to move out into a crappy motel room, and became an alcohol and cocaine addict as a result, hitting rock bottom. It's revealed that he's become the "man in the woods" and, in the last few seconds of the short, is last seen reaching into his coat for a weapon to murder a fearful Sid out of revenge.
• Dramatic Irony: Sid's lie works and keeps the kids far away from the woods and the honeysuckle which leaves him all alone when the teacher comes to exact his revenge.
• Drowning My Sorrows: The teacher starts abusing alcohol (with cocaine) after he gets fired and reputation ruined.
• Establishing Character Moment: In his introductory scene we see Sid angrily steal honeysuckle from a little girl while glaring at her and another boy. He then shoves it into his lunchbox, which is already filled to the brim with his own honeysuckle. This shows off his brattiness and his desire to have all the honeysuckle blossoms.
• Failed a Spot Check: Despite Sid claiming that there's a dangerous man in the woods, he still goes to the edge of said woods to collect honeysuckle, wholly unconcerned about the threat he claims lurks within. Neither the school authorities or his mother pick up on this.
• Fairy Tale Motifs: There's a notable parallel to "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". The shepherd boy (Sid) claims there's a wolf (the Man in the Woods) in order to entertain themselves (or in Sid's case, get more Honeysuckles) and pays the price for it (potentially with his life) when a real wolf (the teacher) rears its head.
• Fired Teacher: Sid's lie about the man in the woods gets the teacher fired after he doesn't do enough to investigate. Even worse, due to the story, he ends up getting ostracized from other schools and can't get another job.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Right up until the Wham Line and Wham Shot, there are two hints that the Teacher has decided to become "the Man in the woods" — 1). Three imagined versions of fictional people have been haunting the Teacher and 2). Before he shows up to presumably kill Sid, he's in the imagined lava that all the kids (sans Sid) stood away from because of "the man in the woods."
• Flower Motifs: The honeysuckle flowers play a big part in the story but it's an ironic one because honeysuckles are associated with happiness and are thought to ward off evil. Honeysuckles sure made Sid happy but, because of his lies, no-one's happy and he ends up creating evil in the form of the vengeful teacher.
• Foreshadowing:
  • At one point the fictional killer is described as having "crazy yellow eyes," with an accompanying shot of them. After it shows the teacher has taken to snorting cocaine, there's a closeup to his eyes.
  • Attentive viewers will also notice that a few scenes show empty beer bottles in the front seat of the narrator's car. This foreshadows his descent into alcoholism and drugs in the wake of being fired from his job.
• Friend to All Children: The teacher is shown to be pleasant to his students, until Sid's lie got him fired.
• From Bad to Worse: From a lie, to a teacher being fired, to said teacher possibly committing murder.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Possibly. The teacher started off as a harmless, but competent and Nice Guy Cool Teacher, but transforms into a cynical, Addled Addict Broken Ace who is possibly going to kill a child (Sid).
• Greed: Sid's motivation. He can't bear for his classmates to get any of the honeysuckles.
• Hate Sink: Sid, his mother and the school faculty are all clearly intended to be hated, and this helps the teacher look more sympathetic.
• Hard Truth Aesop:
  • Children do have a capacity for telling you lies.
  • Telling lies can have serious consequences, possibly even deadly ones.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Sid starts the rumor of there being a man in the woods to get all the honeysuckles for himself, unintentionally getting his teacher fired and destroying his life. The ending implied the teacher wants revenge and becomes the man in the woods Sid lied about.
• Hypocrite: Sid's mother is furious that the Teacher seemed neglectful of his duties but it's implied she is no better herself, but as a parent.
• Ironic Echo: As the teacher is confronting Sid at the end, he utters the words "There's a man in the woods", the same words Sid used to start the rumor in the first place.
• Irony: Sid excused himself to go near the honeysuckles despite claims of the "man in the woods" by lying that he was the only one qualified to somehow keep the titular entity at bay. This not only leaves him vulnerable to the vengeful teacher (whose transformation into the "man in the woods" is unto itself ironic), but his cowering before the teacher strongly implies he didn't even have the mettle to face any real "man in the woods".
• It's All About Me:
  • Sid lies about a dangerous psycho in the woods because he doesn't want to share the honeysuckle that grows at the edge. He doesn't seem to care about the fact that his classmates are traumatized and his teacher was fired and blacklisted, because he got what he wanted.
  • The school doesn't call in the police or take any other action to investigate Sid's story, but they scapegoat the teacher to protect their own reputation by showing that they're "taking action".
• Kids Are Cruel: Sid examplifies this trope by being an unpleasant hog who doesn't want to share flowers with his classmates and is willing to lie and pretend to be good for it.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Sid created a monster to scare the children away so he could have the Honeysuckles all to himself. In the end, Sid's monster comes to life in the form of the vengeful teacher, who is heavily implied to kill Sid while he's at the honeysuckle bush, all alone with no witnesses around, because his lie made everybody else too scared to go near the area.
• Lazy Bum: Rather than actually investigate the alleged criminal sighting from Sid, the heads of the school evidently thought a better idea would be to just fire the teacher after accusations of negligence came flooding in. And as evidenced by the school changing its name all together in light of the "Man in the woods" incident, they haven't learned their lesson: they're still just treating the symptoms of the lie instead of the lie itself.
• Malicious Slander: Thanks to the slander of Sid's mother, the teacher couldn't find a job because no school wants a teacher who didn't take action of a threat.
• Nameless Narrative: Sid is the only named character.
• Never My Fault: Two examples:
  • The school faculty refuses to actually investigate Sid's claims of criminal activity and instead shirk responsibility onto the teacher, who had been nothing but attentive to the children and thus knows that Sid's lying. They then decide to lay all the blame on him and have him fired.
  • Sid's mother meanwhile, never once thinks of investigating his claim either, and takes it further by deciding the school should hold all the responsibility whilst simultaneously not lifting a finger to do anything about it herself. She also never once considers the possibility that her son may have been lying (which he was), and is in fact gravely offended at the mere suggestion that her perfect little angel is even capable of such a thing.
• Nice Guy: Played straight and then subverted. The teacher was an attentive, soft-spoken man who cared about all his students, even Sid. The fallout from Sid's lies turned him into a bitter, cynical Addled Addict who now plans on murdering Sid for ruining his reputation.
• Nothing Is Scarier: The short ends before we see what the teacher does to Sid. It's certainly implied to be lethal revenge but how he's going to do it is left unrevealed; we don't even see what potential murder weapon he's about to whip out.
• Oh, Crap!: Sid's reaction when he sees his former teacher behind the honeysuckle bush preparing to pull out a weapon on him.
• Only Sane Man: The teacher is the only person in the entire video not to believe Sid and spot the holes in his claims. He unfortunately doesn't stay sane thanks to the lie costing him everything.
• Parental Neglect: Sid's mother shows more interest in her computer than her child.
• Pushover Parents: Sid's mother is implied to be too busy to really pay attention to him, and when a problem that she can't ignore presents itself, she expects his teacher to take care of it... but refuses to accept that her son might be the issue.
• Rhymes on a Dime: The entire story is done in rhyming couplets. To a terrifying effect.
• Rule of Symbolism: The ending shot shows the teacher on the dark side of the forest, while Sid is on the sunny side (where the school is), and that the honeysuckle that prompted Sid to start everything is on both sides.
• Rule of Three: The title is said three times in the story.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The whole dang story. Sid claims that there's a dangerous man in the woods, which isn't initially true. However, his lie sets off a series of events that lead to the teacher, his life ruined by the fiasco, deciding to become the man in the woods and go after his former student.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: The teacher attire shows him going from a Cool Teacher to Broken Ace.
• Snowball Lie: It starts with Sid, who spreads it to the schoolkids, who later spread it to the parents, who drag the school itself into it and get the teacher fired.
• Start of Darkness: The teacher used to be a Nice Guy who looked out for all his students but then one of them decided to lie about a man in the woods in order to scare his classmates off honeysuckles. The ramifications that follow lead to the teacher getting accused of not doing anything for the safety of the kids, getting fired then becoming unhinged enough to come after the same kid for revenge.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Sid and his mother are physically identical.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: The teacher becomes the man in the woods.
• Think of the Children!: Invoked on a poster in another school that rejects the Teacher's job application after he gets fired. Is also ostensibly the reason he's fired in the first place, even though neither his bosses nor his parents bother to actually investigate Sid's claims.
• This Is Gonna Suck: During the ending, If you look closely you can see Sid’s "Oh, Crap!" expression drop into a "I’m so screwed" one.
• Title Drop: The teacher says the title twice and Sid (in a flashback) said it once.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: The Teacher was once a friendly and caring man who genuinely loved his job. But Sid's lies ruined his reputation, got him fired, and even led to the Teacher becoming a cocaine and alcohol abuser. Now, he might have become so broken and cynical to the point he's willing to kill a child.
• Trademark Favorite Food: The kids are shown to love honeysuckles. This is especially true for Sid, who goes as far as taking some from his classmates and making up a rumor about a Serial Killer roaming the woods to have them all for himself.
• Tranquil Fury: The Teacher drops into this for the last four stanzas after several stanzas of hysterical ranting, right as he's about to kill Sid.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: It's doubtful that Sid intended for the teacher to get fired over his lie, but he's shown to not care later on in the short. At least, not until he meets his vengeful teacher again...
• Vocal Dissonance: The old-looking Teacher has a more younger-sounding voice than expected.
• Wham Line: The four last stanzas:
  ...But I can play along. I can be good! Do you hear that, Sid? There's a man in the woods.
• Wham Shot: Accompanying the Wham Line above, the very ending shot shows the teacher coming out of the woods towards Sid, reaching in his pocket for something, likely to hurt Sid before it cuts to black.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Seeing as one little brat lying for his own benefit managed to completely ruin the teacher's life, can you really blame him for going off the deep end like that?
• Would Hurt a Child: The ending all-but-outright-shows that the narrator murdered Sid in cold blood in revenge for getting him fired and destroying his reputation.