Im not gonna lie, the UK summertime is kicking my arse. I needed a distraction, I’d had ‘Limbo’ sat on my shelf for a year or two at this point, so I figured with a runtime of less than an hour and a promise of ‘Trippy Horror Goodness’ that i’d probably have a pretty good time with it.
The films described by AGFA and Bleeding Skull themselves as ‘What if David Lynch with Nine Inch Nails as the soundtrack?’ and…to me? thats…kind of all there is to it really. I dont know whether its the intense heat, tiredness, or just that I didnt catch this film in the right atmosphere, in the right headspace. But It just really didnt do much for me.
I’ll get the best part of this film out of the way up front, which is the direction and cine. For the most part its fine enough, but occasionally, it kicks out against what its trying to do. And when it does that it winds up producing either some of the most engaging, surreal, dream like and moody cinematography i’ve seen in a VERY long time that perfectly replicates the feeling of being on the verge of falling asleep. OR! it’s some of the worst cine i’ve seen and feels rough, shakey, underlit and unpleasent.
This is an art house SOV horror film, with the occasional bit of 8mm thrown in for good measure…and as a piece you ‘experience’ visually, I think it looks pretty good, in fact the majority of my rating is purely based on its technical style, flare and mood. It hit me almost immediately as the kind of thing you’d have running on screens in the background of a party. that people maybe catch a 10 second snatch of before moving on to the dip and doritos…But to actually conciously sit and watch it? well…thats where I hit my problems with this one.
See, the audio quality is HORRENDOUS, with most of the dialogue inaudible due to crowded location scenes, outdoor location work and even the set works mics arnt great and consistently muffle the dialogue. I watched with Subtitles on, but even so, the dialogue itself is sparse, gives little away and didnt hang together as well as i’d have liked.
I got VERY lost in the plotting on this one. I tried to follow it as best as I could, but…I dont know if I missed something…I couldnt make head nor tail of exactly what was supposed to be going on. Id say the arthouse element runs stronger than the horror element. Because I was so baffled by the production on the whole, I spent most of the time too deep in thought to actually find the horror anything other than distracting.
The characters all seemed kind of one note, and because of the very rough editing, it makes it hard to keep track of who’s doing what, where, how and why… the pacing is painfully slow burn. and, if you watching this as an art piece. I could see it being better BECAUSE of the slow burn nature. But as a work of cinema that someones choosing to sit and watch…its glacial, and not in a fun way.
The performances range from beige to aggressive, but not in a fun way. physical performances are really poor, with little to no motion unless its a set piece, at which point the film goes a bit crazy and the cast are advised to improvise flailing for a bit. Noone really stood out to me, and as mentioned, it was so hard to keep track of what was supposed to be happening that I just kind of gave up on them by about 35 minutes in.
The soundtracks fine enough. and like I say, the direction, at points, is absolutley incredible for the SOV genre. But those moments are few and far between, and what I was left with was effectively ‘Concussion Cinema’ just a handful of moments that incogherently interconnect, that probably tell a story you need to either piece together from multiple rewatches, or figure out. Or its leaving it open to interpretation…But brain tired, no room for complex high level processing.
I may well give this one another go at some point. But, even taking on board the creative technical flourishes…I was just kind of ‘bleh’ about it. Your milage may vary. But I just…couldnt really get into this one. Why watch this when I have ‘Fire Walk With Me’ LITERALLY less than one foot away from being watched instead?..
TYTD Reviews 