Dir - Ben Wheatley
Overall: MEH
The latest horror outing from writer/director Ben Wheatley is another captivatingly photographed yet ultimately misguided, pretentious mess. In the Earth was filmed in fifteen days during the COVID-19 quarantine and certainly seems to be an answer to the pandemic. Set during a viral outbreak where scientists are working on some form of a cure in the woodlands outside of Bristol, the movie plays out like a mother nature nightmare where Pagan mythology, hallucinations, madness, survivalist instincts, and vague scientific hoopla co-mingle with each other rather jarringly. The tone is utterly humorless, laying the groundwork for equal levels of uncomfortable incoherence. Wheatley's genre films linger in a frustratingly half-baked narrative landscape more often than not and a similar case of paddling against the waves with no obtainable destination is once again readily apparent here. The cast is earnestly committed and the very tripped-out optical effects are gorgeously put together for such a low-budgeted, rough, rushed, handheld camera affair. Sadly, Wheatley's guerilla-style, mystical ambitions amount to a considerable chunk of nothing despite such deliberate efforts to come off as profound.
Dir - Prano Bailey-Bond
Overall: MEH
An expansion on her earlier short Nasty from 2015, writer/director Pran Bailey-Bond's full-length debut Censor is a part throwback, part psychological, part heavily-surreal character study. Set during the video nasty era in England and using such a jumping-off point to examine the fundamental concept of life imitating art, Bailey-Bond presents a film that is purposely stylized and deliberately intent on blurring its narrative components. Visually, it is clearly influenced by Italian giallo color schemes and aesthetics while playing with aspect rations and film-within-a-film motifs. The un-glamorized portrayal of conservative office buildings and grimy subways would seem to juxtapose such things, but the overall look is more consistent than not. While it is steadily captivating to look at and Bailey-Bond's attention to visual detail is undoubtedly impressive, the movie falters a bit under its ambitions. It bares many similarities to other ambiguous, experimental stories revolving around traumatized and increasingly unstable, central protagonists, but it becomes more frustratingly muddled than engaging as things progress. Irish actress Niamh Algar is quite good in the lead and Bailey-Bond cleverly ties her mental decent into the setting itself where women were both exploited on screen and demeaned off screen. There is a style over substance vibe that unfortunately becomes slightly detrimental to the whole though. While imperfect then, it is still a promising debut from a respectfully challenging filmmaker.
Dir - Jaco Bouwer
Overall: MEH
As a somewhat rare, South African ecological horror film, Jaco Bouwer's Gaia is low on introspective ideas, but has some inherent, ambiguous beauty to it all the same. Written by Tertius Kapp, one could almost toss it off as yet another "tripping in the woods" story where characters find themselves both isolated and victim to mother nature's mysterious and mystical hallucinations. Though plenty of evidence presents itself that otherworldly elements are indeed at play, the minimalist approach does not wield many narratively compelling results. The cast is quite small and the dialog is sparse, neither of which allows for any proper understanding of what may be going on. While this is not universally necessary, the film also grows monotonous and rather stuck in the mud after awhile. Interesting visuals are introduced, (as well as some creepy, inventive creature designs), but the story lingers on three characters going nowhere throughout the bulk of it and the very little we do learn ultimately does not lead anywhere that enhances either the mood nor the story. There are biblical nods, numerous dream within a dream sequences, plenty of visual, acid-trip flair, grime and grit, but it all results in mere arthouse aesthetics that are fun to look at yet vacant to ponder.
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