‘Cycle: The Bloody Summer of 1999’ is…an intense short film…I think thats a fair measure for it. its a 2004, 20 minute assault on the senses, and im still not entirely sure what I just sat through.

The basic plot is that, in the summer of 1999, a mental hospital undertook one of the most savage incidents in post war german history, when a man in a mask invaded the hospital and essentially turned it into an experimental torturing ground, over several days, fuelled by violent movies. He would subject the entire hospital, staff and patients to horrendous torture techniques. to the extent that the hospital was abandoned and anyone who went anywhere NEAR it, was usually never seen or heard from again.

Cut to the present day of 2004, and a journalist and his camera man have decided to undertake a tour of the hospital unsupervised to see if they can piece together any of the depravity…and from there the film kind of jumps around in time, mainly focussed on the ‘Summer of 1999’ but also jumping to various dates between 2000 and 2004 showing us what happened after the incident to anyone who dared try to get close to the hospital…

And its there really where the film kind of lost me, because directionally, the films suffering heavily from that weird blip in early/mid 2000s culture, where editing was treated less like an art and more like an assault on the senses. its a non stop frantic piece thats aiming not to waste a single second on anything other than trying to hit you with everything the director can muster.

The actual plot isnt really anything to write home about, its your standard haunted house movie, just set in a hospital instead of a house…but the actual plotting of that story is a mess because we keep getting flung backwards and forwards. I think the intention was that, as the news crew wander from room to room, we flash back to that room in 1999 as the torture was happening, but because of how fast the footage moves, both in terms of whip pans and cutting combined with how close the camera is getting to the subject. I really struggled to make sense of what I was looking at.

The characters arnt that fleshed out, which you can either see as problematic because it means why should we as the audience care what happens about them, or you can see it as a plus, adding mystery to who the killer actually is or what their motives are…I personally fell into the former camp, because I, as a viewer, need at least a little bit of context as to why I should care about any of this…and the tone is seemingly just ‘be as unpleasent and intense as possible’. Which again, didnt exactly endere me to the production.

The direction yields some interesting and trippy camera effects, but theres an overeliance on plug ins that really put me off, an overeliance on ‘fish eye’ lens shots, again, a victim of its time…that AGAIN…really put me off this thing, sequences feel like they were assembled via smoothie maker, and the whole thing feels totally mashed up. I also feel I should mention at this point that theres also a weird overeliance on penises across this films runtime, with an extended mutilation sequence and an extended (simulated) ejaculation scene leaving me just kind of struggling to hang on to the production for dear life.

The characters arnt well fleshed out, are again…very intense, when they really didnt need to be and dont really get anything in the way of a character arc, and the soundtrack is just drone and noise that made me feel a bit ill honestly.

I didnt really get on with this one. If your a fan of films that are ‘gore and not much else’ then this’ll definitely be your party…but for me? there just wasnt enough story, and the visuals were so unpleasently handled, that I dont think i’ll ever really want to watch this one again.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/cycle-the-bloody-summer-of-1999/