Jan Svankmajer's ability to keep audiences Engaged

I'm not keen on surrealism, which is why I found much of Svankmajer's work slightly annoying in the way that it was far too random and unrelatable. This includes shorts like Dimensions of Dialogue, which despite keeping us guessing at how the textures in the animation were going to shift next, made very little, if any real sense.
What he is a master at, is his ability to keep the audience engaged, and his most genius example of this is Down to Cellar. This masterpiece in creating character empathy and POV centres around a little girl who walks down the stairs to collect potatoes out of the cellar. A simple story premise, powerfully engaging through tension and horror.
As the girl walks down the stairs, she passes the looming stares of a creepy old man who offers her a sweet and middle aged woman who gives her a sordid glare. A Cat screeches and stands guard at the gate of the cellar. The girl struggles to get light as she walks through the dark passage and hears strange whispering voices.
She encounters the old man lying on a charcoal bed ushering her over and the middle aged woman offering her a charcoal burger. As she runs away from this, and the cat follows her, screeching, things begin to get even more creepy: She tries to fill her basket with potatoes but they keep rolling back inside the box, and when she finally grabs hold of them and reaches the stairs of the cellar, the cat distracts her and the potatoes go scattering back into the cellar. We feel for her frustration, her disappointment that she must now undergo this ordeal once more...