Today, Zendaya is a big star of both the big and small screen. We can still watch her in the second part of the Dune saga, where she plays one of the main roles – Chani. Zendaya’s co-star in the movie is Timothée Chalamet, who had prior experience with science fiction cinema before Dune: he had a relatively small role in Nolan’s Interstellar.
Interestingly, Zendaya herself once expressed her admiration for the work of the British director on her social media, writing:
Interstellar might be the best movie I’ve ever seen…..I need to go somewhere and contemplate life. (…) I have a serious obsession with Interstellar like I really love that dang movie
Quentin Tarantino also spoke positively about Nolan’s film some time ago. Let’s remind ourselves of his words:
“We’re waiting for the movie to start and it hit me. I realized that it hadn’t been since The Matrix that I was actually that interested in seeing a movie even though I didn’t know what I was going to see. It’s been a while since somebody has come out with such a big vision to things. Even the elements, the fact that dust is everywhere, and they’re living in this dust bowl that is just completely enveloping this area of the world. That’s almost something you expect from [Andrei] Tarkovsky or [Terrence] Malick, not a science fiction adventure movie.”
In Interstellar, humanity on Earth is coming to an end due to climate change, and a group of scientists discovers a spacetime tunnel that enables the search for a new home. The movie starred Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, and Michael Caine, among others. The production hit screens in 2014.
I love the way he plays with his favorite convention while paying homage to it. He first caught attention in 2005 with the spectacular success of Saw, which, with a budget of one and a half million dollars, managed to earn over 55 million dollars, giving birth to one of the most recognizable horror series of the last decade.
In 2007, James Wan intrigued with the imaginative Dead Silence, and three years later significantly shook the audience with Insidious, which instantly became a hit. Then Wan subtly sneaked in The Conjuring, once again proving that he knows perfectly well how to operate with horror.
The main theme of Wan’s The Conjuring is well-known to all horror fans and even familiar to some. Once again, we have the pleasure of entering a haunted house. The action of the film takes place in the 1970s. We meet a sympathetic family moving into their newly purchased home. The idyll is quickly disrupted by the presence of a paranormal force, which over time will fill the family with increasing fear. The further development of events is something every moderately intelligent lover of celluloid experiences can predict on their own. However, it must be added that an important role in purifying the atmosphere of the possessed house from the dormant evil will be played by the couple of demonologists who come to the family’s aid. This couple is the 19th-century duo Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga), famous American researchers of paranormal phenomena. Many horror stories have been based on their work (including the Amityville series). The Conjuring is therefore another horror film based on true events.
The strength of Wan’s The Conjuring (as well as his previous ones) lies in the skillful selection of elements that are meant to evoke fear and equally skillful execution of them. While the plot doesn’t offer anything new, there is something extraordinary about it. What exactly? The technical aspects deserve the main recognition. In the cinematography, one can sense the old-school craftsmanship, which, through slow camera zooms and spectacular transitions, adds something peculiar to the mounting tension. The Conjuring, much like Insidious, is also, or perhaps primarily, a true concert of sound effects, with a very intense and penetrating sound that makes even the most banal scene contain signs of something unsettling and attention-grabbing. These are no longer the mindless tones that annoy us in every other horror movie whenever a door closes behind the protagonist. This is something completely different, much more thoughtful.
Also significant is the way the director plays with the audience’s expectations. The characters look into mirrors and open closets, but the demonic apparition seems to have no desire to show itself when it seems most appropriate. This shows how saturated we are with the genre’s standard tricks and how much our threshold of expectations has decreased in relation to scare tactics. Conversely, after a fairly restrained prologue, I had the impression that nothing would surprise me in the rest of the movie. However, it turned out that I was deliberately put to sleep because it was only an emotional warm-up before the finale. So when I realized the rules governing the film’s narrative, I appreciated how meticulously and sparingly the tension is dosed out.
The reverence with which James Wan processes genre conventions deserves recognition. Through each subsequent film of this talented director, creative passion speaks, most likely shaped by careful observation of genre changes. This is no different this time, as seen in many references to classics (The Exorcist, The Birds). Wan doesn’t try to be original for the sake of it. He’s only interested in reformulating well-known and proven ideas. He invites a new demon of unprecedented proportions into the old house we’ve visited many times before, filled with the ruling evil. The exorcisms that take place no longer require a Catholic priest, but they are still full of faith. Faith in the healing power of good.
Certainly, you’ve probably noticed that the older you get, the more you notice and understand in movies or TV shows things that you didn’t see before. No different is the case with one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time, Friends. I suggest taking a moment to reflect on what things in Friends escaped our notice when we were younger.
The first time I encountered Friends was when I was still in elementary school. I remember being very surprised at how often the main characters eat pizza. I think you’ll agree with me that when you’re a little kid, it’s something you don’t eat every day, only on special occasions, for pleasure, something you have to earn. With time, it starts appearing more often in your life, from house party to house party, from friend to friend. Then comes the time to leave the family nest. And that’s the moment when – at least judging by me and my friends – pizza permanently enters your daily repertoire because you realize that it’s the most economical and versatile meal there is. So, it’s no wonder that it begins to appear more often in your home, and you start to notice that it wasn’t in Friends by chance but rather symbolizes that period in your life when you’re in your twenties, no one is holding you back, and yet you don’t have many responsibilities, so why not eat pizza as every meal of the day?
The further into the woods, or adult life, I go, the more intensely I wonder if a day in Friends is twice as long as an average person’s day. If not, then how do the characters find time to spend whole days in their favorite café? The older they get, the more unrealistic it seems to climb the career ladder, establish stable relationships, raise children, and still be able to meet there so often and in such full force. Especially since each of them works in completely different places, at different times. You’ll surely agree with me that once you’ve started your professional career for good, gathering such a large group of friends in one place and time is quite a logistical challenge.
How can twenty-somethings who don’t make a fortune afford such apartments in the heart of New York City? This question surely crosses the mind of every adult who has encountered the overwhelming prices of real estate in a big city. Okay, Monica sublets her apartment from her grandmother, who moved to Florida, so she pays less than she should if she rented it in a normal way, that’s some explanation. But what about the rest of the Friends, who also live in Manhattan and can afford it even though their professions are not ones that boast huge earnings? Especially with Phoebe and Joey leading the way, who most of the time don’t even have a steady job? If Friends weren’t paid for hanging out at Central Perk, the amount of their paycheck compared to Manhattan apartment prices remains a big mystery.
In this regard, Friends are not an exception because it’s hard to find strong curses in most American TV shows due to restrictions imposed by the Federal Communications Commission. However, when you’re younger, you don’t pay attention to it at all, but when you’re older and can somewhat identify with the situations the characters are in, you start to notice that it’s almost unbelievable not to start a juicy tirade in many of them. Interestingly, on the internet, you can find compilations of all the moments when Friends happened to curse – Rachel is leading in the number of curses and euphemisms replacing them!
As a child, probably few of us paid attention to this, especially growing up in ethnically undiversified Poland, but watching Friends as an adult, the lack of racial diversity immediately catches the eye. The fact that all the main characters are white people is nothing extraordinary; as you can see, relatively recently, something started to change in this context in TV productions. However, since the action takes place in New York, one of the most racially diverse cities in the world, where one-third of the population was born outside the United States, it seems unlikely that all the people appearing in the lives of Friends are white – throughout all 10 seasons, I can remember only a few colored characters, always in episodic roles.
When I was little, it seemed to me that Friends had a happy ending – everyone smiling, starting a new chapter in their lives, with their loved ones by their side… But do they really all have a happy ending? What about Joey? Without a significant other, absolutely not at the peak of his career, with his best friends moving out to start a new life, left on his own. It didn’t happen without reason; the fact that Joey’s story was not properly concluded has a pragmatic explanation in the spin-off series featuring his character, aptly titled Joey, which, however, for obvious reasons, failed to replicate the success of Friends and was taken off the air halfway through the second season, ultimately leaving Joey without any happy ending.
We learn from it what extreme climate cooling can lead to, namely the dominance of the ecosystem by the last season of the year. This topic is quite relevant, considering the ongoing appeals and research conducted by the scientific community regarding the threats posed by weather anomalies resulting from global warming.
There have been relatively few winter apocalypses in cinema – the most important one being Altman‘s Quintet, and the most popular being Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow. It’s a pity that the creators of the film The Colony completely failed to capitalize on this “climatic” potential because there is barely a quarter of frosty atmosphere in it, and the rest of the screening time is filled with a festival of numbing stupidity.
Right from the start, through the off-screen narrator (as usual completely unnecessary), we learn what the story presented in the film is based on. The Earth covered in snow no longer resembles the place it once was. Humanity gathers in underground shelters, forming colonies of survivors from the global catastrophe. Colony 7, to which the film’s protagonists belong, soon receives a mysterious SOS signal sent from another, friendly colony. An expedition is organized, consisting of three people, whose goal is to clarify the situation in which the settlers sending the message found themselves.
It’s not difficult to predict what awaits the characters as they uncover the genesis of the mysterious signal. However, if you still have doubts about this matter, watching the trailer should effectively dispel them. The creators of The Colony opted for the most clichéd plot solution for post-apocalyptic cinema, popularized in the famous The Last Man on Earth and repeatedly imitated afterward. The protagonist and those closest to him are walking embodiments of humanism, against whom – at the appropriate stage of intrigue – a group of ominous mutants appears, embodying deeply hidden layers of animality. You know the picture, right? Typically, this whole setup is intended to once again give the viewer a clear demonstration of what a human disconnected from their human identity might look and behave like. But for heaven’s sake, how much longer? The art lies in using a tried-and-tested formula creatively, not just mechanically filling in the script.
And that’s the whole problem with The Colony. Without utilizing an interesting initial idea, a painfully derivative plot is pieced together, serving up all the clichés with such deadly seriousness as if they were pinnacles of screenwriting. And as if that weren’t enough, the film is filled with scenes that reject rationality. I must admit that I will not soon forget the moment when a group of settlers, armed with firearms, upon seeing a pack of cannibalistic mutants charging towards them, decide to flee, completely forgetting about what they are holding in their hands and how to use it. But then, this sequence would have ended in 30 seconds, and a film must be filled with some action.
But the problems don’t end with the screenplay. The production screams with a general “cheapness” because it was made on a relatively small budget. Looking at the wintry landscapes, one cannot shake off the impression that they were entirely CGI, and the actors didn’t even feel a hint of cold, as during the filming they surely didn’t even stick their noses out of the studio. Therefore, there is not a shred of realism in the film. I would wager that the lion’s share of the $16 million budget went to the two actor’s salaries. The film features two well-known names – Laurence Fishburne and Bill Paxton – who were supposed to be a magnet for the audience, but surely no one doubts that their acting heydays are long gone. Unfortunately, in The Colony, these actors do not in any way suggest that one could think differently of them. Paradoxically, however, Paxton delivered the most interesting performance in the film, but perhaps that’s because his Manson – a ruthless former soldier – is not a one-dimensional character and contrasts the unnatural and idealized altruism of the rest of the characters with purely rational motives.
Enough tongue-wagging. Although there was potential in the initial idea of The Colony, the way to bring it to life turned out to be alarmingly bad. You can’t even peg this movie under the guilty pleasure criterion because, due to its inflated level of pomposity, it loses to many B-movie classics, which often stand out for their greater creative flair. The creators of The Colony molded such an unwieldy, almost caricatural snowman that it’s hard not to look at it with a face of pity written all over.
The adaptation of the well-known novel by Jean Ray had the makings of a great film, but…
When his ship docks at the port, young sailor Jan disembarks and wanders through the town until he eventually comes across an old mansion called Malpertuis. In this secluded dwelling, he encounters a gallery of oddities, including his sister Nancy and his bedridden uncle Cassavius. The dying patriarch intends to distribute his wealth among the numerous inhabitants of Malpertuis, but on the condition that they swear never to leave the place. The inheritance will then go to the last living couple inhabiting the house full of labyrinthine corridors, staircases, and secret rooms. In the claustrophobic building, a series of brutal murders occur, and some of the residents of Malpertuis (animal stuffer, local madman, three women in black, etc.) seem to be hiding a dark secret. Jan falls in love with the beautiful Euriale and tries to unravel the mystery of Cassavius’s house.
Malpertuis is an adaptation of Jean Ray’s novel (1887–1964), actually Raymundus Johannes de Kremer – a Belgian writer, comic book writer, and journalist who was said to owe much to Edgar Allan Poe. There is some truth in this: Malpertuis may evoke associations with The Fall of the House of Usher. Belgian director Harry Kümel secured funding for the adaptation of Ray’s novel following the success of the erotic horror film Daughters of Darkness (1971). In 1972, the English-language version of Malpertuis (cut by an American distributor who removed 20 minutes of material) qualified for the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival but lost the race for the Golden Palm to the films The Working Class Goes to Heaven by Elio Petri and The Mattei Affair by Francesco Rosi. The following year saw the release of Kümel’s full director’s cut of the film, but it also failed to achieve success – neither commercially nor critically.
The creators managed to engage Orson Welles himself for the role of Cassavius, but collaborating with the legendary filmmaker proved to be extremely difficult. Welles spent only a few days on set, mostly drunk and irritable, driving the crew crazy: he insisted on close-ups of his face, forgot his lines, disrupted other actors, and interfered with the director’s work. On the last day, he apologized for his whims, finished shooting, and left the film set. In the English version, Welles speaks with his own voice, but in the director’s version, the actor was dubbed in Flemish, further weakening his caricatured performance. Equally poor and wooden is Mathieu Carrière as Jan. The true star of the film, however, is Susan Hampshire – a British actress who portrayed five characters (including three main ones: Nancy, Euriale, and Alice/Alecto) and excelled in each of them.
Understanding the plot without knowledge of the literary original can prove to be very difficult – and this applies to both the producer’s and director’s versions. The film remains unclear to the end, and the ending does not resolve whether all of this really happened, or if it was just Jan’s dream or hallucinations. However, this ambivalence is not a sign of Kümel’s mastery but of his incompetence, and the evidence of indecision is the presence of three (!) consecutive plot twists, none of which brings satisfaction. Therefore, the greatest assets of Malpertuis are its technical elements: the baroque set design by Pierre Cadiou, excellent cinematography by Gerry Fisher, and the disturbing music by Georges Delerue. Together, they create a dense, grotesque atmosphere reminiscent of the excellent Czechoslovak horror film Morgiana (1972) by Juraj Herz, but they do not elevate the whole above the level of an “academic” curiosity. An interesting failure.
As easy as addiction goes, anyone who starts their morning with an espresso drip knows it, as do fans of aspartame chewing through eight packs of Orbit a day, and so do roaring forty-something singles sniffing crushed chocolate for an endorphin rush, as well as heroin addicts injecting needles into their eyeballs – to each their own, your time, your health, your money. As you’ve probably noticed, there haven’t been any new releases in this dripping-with-cult section for the past few weeks. The reason is simple: I had a problem with VHS addiction, a multi-genre concoction, and when I got carried away, I could spend the whole weekend high, watching film after film, much to the dissatisfaction of my better half.
Apparently, VHS classics really messed with my head: I stopped shaving, smoked two packs of unfiltered cigarettes, and started walking around the office barefoot, wearing only an undershirt and a beret – just in case of an attack by German terrorists with British accents. When I tried to kiss my woman again without removing the toothpick from my mouth, Jadzia said enough and sent me to detox in the happy land of TV soap operas and American cinematic novelties, which she called “new wave indie social cinema” – explaining my several-week absence. When the treatment didn’t yield the expected results (I was tossing and turning like Arnie in Total Recall: “Let me go… aghhhh!!!”), Jadzia thanked me for my cooperation, and I, hooked up through a Euro connector like through a venous cannula, spent the last month drowning my sorrows in the joyful realm of VHS – Hitachi, let me live!!! One of the titles – turned out to be very timely, as it dealt with drugs and the danger associated with them (yes, I know about the existence of Brain Damage) – it was Ticks, or the B-classic from 1993.
The thematic combination of forest parasites (aforementioned Ticks) with GMO marijuana and gangsters is a potential hit, and so it is in this case. Well, but from the beginning: a group of troubled teenagers is delegated to some godforsaken forest center, where they are supposed to get rid of worries and problems, fight addictions, and work on their characters. The crew, being an upgraded version of teenagers from John Hughes’ movies, is practically begging for brutal death from bloodthirsty spiders. Whoever wasn’t there – noble sympathetic redhead, delicate maiden, future single mother of five, Latino wise guy, and a future victim of Brooklyn gang skirmishes. The whole idea of the trip, of course, is pretextual and mega dumb; one of the characters goes to the forest to treat anxiety states, it should be added that these anxiety states were caused by the fact that he got lost in the forest years ago, which traumatized him so much that he developed agoraphobia – does forest wilderness cause fear of open spaces in the city? How so? Yes, it does, Los Angeles is a concrete jungle – you’re down in the jungle baby, you’re gonna dieee, as Axl Rose squealed. Whatever you fear, that’s what you heal, so the red-haired lad goes to the forest for shock therapy – literally, because encounters with mutated ticks can’t be called anything else.
Since we’re already on ticks, as is commonly known, those damn things are terrible – three stages of development (larva, nymph, imago), in each of them they have to suck blood from a vertebrate – some nature documentary about these arachnids or a few pictures from Google can serve as a solid horror material. However, a plain tick is not enough, and you have to mutate the old geezer with some chemical sludge for growing marijuana (that’s what happens when you grow pot in the woods); as a result, ticks, which are small, millimeter-sized creatures, turn into melon-sized monsters and attack anything in their path. If the victim is on steroids, the ticks also gain weight accordingly – the scene with a tick growing inside the victim’s body, and then tearing the human corpse to shreds, still amazes with its ingenuity to this day. There are several scenes that are simply damn powerful, especially the one with the dog and the lesser-known brother of a famous director, Clint Howard (by the way, one of my favorite actors), who, after a tick attack on his face, looks only slightly worse than usual.
It should be added that ticks are not the only villains in the movie, as there is also an eloquent, very cultured, and absolutely ruthless businessman, who in his free time is a drug baron, and he is accompanied by a redneck idiot helper – just like in life. The whole scheme of growing weed is, of course, mega-ridiculous, because as much as I love a series about a chemistry teacher producing methamphetamine, and I buy into the idea of a government employee with immunity smuggling coke from South America, Gordon Gekko growing weed in some forest backwater doesn’t resonate with me. Weed is good? Seriously? Stuff like that is grown by students in greenhouses somewhere in neighborhood allotments, or maybe in dorms, not by refined businessmen/gangsters – an old wardrobe, pots, good quality soil, sterile bags, aluminum foil, mercury bulbs, a good fan… um, I mean, I don’t know, I’m just saying.
Drugs are evil, and the director shares a similar opinion about them, but it should be noted that libertarian, Lyme-free blood flows in his veins, because Tony Randel consciously criticizes all bans imposed by the state on substances. Here’s the businessman, unable to produce goods legally, in appropriate conditions, fully ecologically, forced to take the path of lawlessness, where he grows marijuana under guerrilla conditions, and in the struggle for survival, he is forced to use chemical agents for faster plant growth, which ultimately leads to tragedy. The presence of grown ticks, biting off limbs, serves here as a symbol – this bloodthirsty tick is actually the crime plaguing the great American country.
Such bans always lead to an escalation of violence. I could start a discourse on the detrimental effects of American prohibition in the years 1919 – 1933, of which the only beneficiaries were probably gangsters and coffin producers, but I will give a closer example to my heart – attention, a story based on facts. My great-grandmother Antonia, who hated communist authorities with all her heart, after the fall of the USSR emigrated from green Ukraine to spend the last years of her life in capitalist Poland. She quickly gained respect in the local homemakers’ club as a skilled specialist in baking, competing with several other ladies for the title of master baker of a wide range of poppy seed cakes – I still remember when I wanted to give a girl a kiss for a poppy seed bun, but the temptation of a poppy seed delicacy was irresistible. Well, poppy seeds were scarce in stores at that time and growing poppies was strictly prohibited, and without special permits, the specter of a poppy seed famine loomed over our village. Resourceful grandma then sowed a patch of corn with several rows of poppies, and in the middle she sowed poppy seeds, and soon Antonia became a real poppy baron in the area – selling poppies in bulk, yeast buns, pancakes, smuggling poppy straw (she always wondered what it was for). The problem arose when the ladies from the homemakers’ club began to be jealous of Antonia’s successes and started to turn their own poppy rolls on the sly.
It was a real war: destroyed crops, shootings from burning candles, stolen berets, ambushes at rosaries – the local priest couldn’t keep up with absolving: “Does grandma renounce…,” bam, another victim of poppy seed hunger ended up with a pierced bike tyre. There was no end to the violence, even one of the toughest, Jozie Rybacka, met her end in a cornfield, and Grandma Antonia herself perished in her fishpond, with a rolling pin in her hand (say hello to my little friend!). This tragedy could have been avoided, as the director of Ticks also knows. Yesterday Grandma Antonia, today murderous ticks, and what tomorrow? I have nothing else left but to recommend Ticks to you for a lazy afternoon, because, as the old mountaineers say, better Ticks on VHS than those under your armpit. From writing absolute nonsense, I feel a slight hunger for movies, and I think I’ll start the Police Academy series soon – seven parts, quite a lot, and the last two installments are so bad that they threaten with a potential golden shot… but I sacrifice myself for you!
Long, long ago, when VHS rental stores were still in operation and DVD rental stores were already functioning (often in the same places), my almost adult self was raiding the resources of the neighborhood movie library with a dear friend. Back then, we devoured movies like madmen – “Training Day” by Antoine Fuqua or “The Ring” by Gore Verbinski were some of the most memorable screenings of that era. But if I were to point out a title for which we almost paid a fine at the rental store, it would be “The Boondock Saints”.
What incurred fines in VHS/DVD rental stores? Usually, it was for keeping the media too long. Typically, you rented it for 24 or 48 hours, but my friend and I were so taken with “The Boondock Saints” that we watched Troy Duffy’s cult classic three times in a row! And it wasn’t because we wanted to get more “value for money” – “The Boondock Saints” was simply something that resonated profoundly with the minds of budding men. Here were the MacManus brothers (Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus), Irishmen from Boston and devout Catholics, who decided to cleanse their turf of the worst scum in the name of God. They are of course pursued by a crazy detective (Willem Dafoe), but it’s not him – the representative of the law – that we root for the most, but these self-proclaimed divine messengers, anti-heroes, who ruthlessly take the lives of more gangsters, murderers, and rapists, convincing themselves that God himself has nominated them for this task. Doesn’t that sound incredible?!? I myself don’t know what I liked most: the chemistry between the brothers, the excellent supporting cast (David Della Rocco as… Rocco steals every scene!), or simply the vision of dispensing justice and cleansing the world of all criminal scum. Because who wouldn’t agree with the aforementioned Rocco, who in one of his many legendary scenes declares that such “cleaners” as the MacManus brothers should operate in every city?
“The Boondock Saints” has everything it needs to become a cult film – vivid characters, cheesy dialogues, violent scenes, and that drop of madness that characterizes bold and audacious creators. Troy Duffy is a filmmaker who hasn’t made any film other than the story of the MacManus brothers and its sequel, made 10 years later. Yet, thanks to “The Boondock Saints”… Duffy was somewhat immortalized in the world of cinema – a production that went through many problems (rejection by Miramax, a lawsuit with Franchise Pictures), barely noticed during its few days in theaters, became a true video market megahit, earning nearly $50 million (with just a seven-million-dollar budget). The sequel made a decade later lacked the same edge, although it still guaranteed a dose of hilarious kitsch and chemistry between the actors – Flanery and Reedus, actors who aren’t A-listers, excelled in the roles of not quite bright but morally strong brothers, who are not interested in earthly goods but justice and punishment for the wicked. “The Boondock Saints” is not your typical mainstream action movie – it’s a film aware of its campiness, yet well-executed and possessing incredible character. Like the cheesy action movies of the 80s from today’s perspective, it doesn’t aspire to greatness, but makes excellent use of its best genre qualities.
“The Boondock Saints,” despite being 25 years old, is still a film with an edge, on one hand full of violence and dark scenes, on the other hand, packed with humor and – as today’s youth says – meme potential. One can only fear that in times when there is increasingly more extremism in the world, Troy Duffy’s film may be interpreted as an encouragement to take justice into one’s own hands – and surely not everyone interprets it the same way as the MacManus brothers…
His cyberpunk Videodrome still stands as one of the best horror films in history for me. The director’s son, Brandon, decided to follow in his father’s footsteps, and in 2012, he came up with his own body horror, Antiviral. I must admit I was somewhat apprehensive about it. I was afraid that young Cronenberg might rely solely on his surname rather than talent. The film turned out to be a pleasant surprise.
In Antiviral, Brandon Cronenberg takes us on a journey to an alternative reality where an unhealthy obsession with celebrities has reached its peak. Given what’s happening there, paying $40,000 for Justin Bieber’s hair seems like a completely harmless, healthy thing to do. In the film, people, wanting to resemble their favorite celebrities, pay hefty sums to inject themselves with viruses caught by those stars. Specialized clinics facilitate this for fanatics.
The story seems to be just a pretext to draw attention to the escalating problem of obsession among many young people. It has its flaws, but it holds together. For most of the screening, the audience has no clue what’s going on, but eventually, the narrative comes together coherently, which works in its favor, heightening the tension. Surprising plot twists evoke astonishment.
The main character, Syd March, is not your typical protagonist. He works at the clinic, and we see that his morality is dubious. He tells every customer the same thing. Particularly significant is the sentence: “It’s somehow perfect, isn’t it?” Besides, it’s hard to identify with him. He has human weaknesses, the greatest of which is a craving for money. As a viewer, I was hesitant to admit any resemblance to him. Dislike grew until the resolution. His appearance, undoubtedly affected by the disease, also contributed to this. At times, it was downright caricatural. Caleb Landry Jones perfectly embodies this character. Syd March is believable at every moment. We see a man brought to complete physical and psychological destruction.
The main character is not an exception. The morality of each character is questionable. The star who sells her cells will do anything to be even more famous, exploiting fans’ obsessions. All of this contrasts with an aesthetic that at times reminded me of George Lucas’s THX 1138. The abundance of white in the picture seems like an attempt by the alternative society to preserve innocence, which is not very successful.
Static dominates, lending a certain severity. Only when the main character “falls apart” does the number of panoramas and camera movements increase. Moreover, increasingly frequent handheld shots perfectly complement the loss of mental balance. Karim Hussain, as a cinematographer, did a great job.
The static perfectly complements the silence, allowing us to contemplate what we see, encouraging thoughts and enabling us to draw conclusions as events unfold. Music appears not too often, but at such appropriate moments that it always evokes some emotions. It is perfectly matched to the image and creates a unique atmosphere. Every production element here has its significance. It advances the action, provides new information about the character, guides the viewer through their psyche, until it leads to a complete loss of sanity.
The ending of Antiviral is very pessimistic. Nietzsche’s words come to mind: “When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” When the credits roll, there is a feeling of dissatisfaction. It’s hard to believe in Syd’s transformation, and one almost wants to ask for further development of the plot.
Antiviral is like a return to the classics of body horror. The main character undergoes torment, and the disease causes mutations in his body. References to the older Cronenberg’s work are also not lacking. At one point, a woman on the TV screen orders herself to be harmed. While not abundant, such references bring much joy. However, one shouldn’t expect “out there” physical tortures. They appear, but very rarely. That’s not the theme of this production, which left me with a bitter taste.
Antiviral is truly a good film. It has an interesting story to tell and aims to draw our attention to a growing problem. It keeps the audience in suspense from beginning to end and leaves them with a certain distaste, prompting reflection. As a viewer, I didn’t want to identify with the main character; I hated him. Nevertheless, upon reflection, I realized I had more in common with him than I would have liked.
Words by Rafal Christ
Netflix solved the Fermi paradox, or rather, it was first solved by Cixin Liu, and then visualized in a pretty good style by Netflix. Unfortunately, I’ve already come across some strange statements online claiming that David Benioff and D.B. Weiss must atone for and compensate viewers for the 8th season of Game of Thrones using the 3 Body Problem. They don’t have to do anything, considering the last season was great. And even if they did, their latest series is well suited for it, despite being an adaptation of the challenging prose of Cixin Liu, specifically the first part of the series. The gracefully flexing spines of Dark Forest and Death’s End still await film versions on my shelf, and I hope they’ll be at least equally good. Don’t be too intimidated by the statement that Cixin Liu’s writing is challenging. He’s not Jacek Dukaj, so basic, albeit solid, knowledge of high school physics is sufficient. The rest can be looked up on Google, and you can even solve some problems for fun. 3 Body Problem has its issues, but it’s not a problem in itself, just a good adaptation that lacked a bit of money for better post-production. However, it didn’t become a tragedy like those from Inhumans, Stargate Origins, or Under the Dome.
On the contrary. Despite the naysayers tied to literal interpretations of Liu’s novel, and there are quite a few of them already (shockingly, not everyone has even watched the show, just knowing that Netflix co-produced it was enough), I believe that the Chinese elements in the series are wonderfully executed visually and narratively. The Western aspects look slightly worse, but the visualization of the Three-Body Game is where the situation is the worst. However, it’s not dramatically low-level, unlike, for example, the third episode of Shogun, where CGI and greenscreens give the impression that Toranaga and Blackthorne are jumping from a ship into a backyard pool, not the sea. I wouldn’t want to delve deeper into details, although I would love to tell you about the ending and point out how the creators approached the original text of the series. Maybe then I could convince at least a few of those dissatisfied viewers that there is sense in this merging of storylines and maintaining the difficult axiological message developed and psychologically worked out by Cixin Liu. To see it in the series is truly worth reading the author’s afterword, which is rare in contemporary novels. It personally summarizes the Chinese writer’s definition of a human being, logically delineating the soulless yet painful way of looking at the achievements of our civilization, which, while gazing hopefully at the stars, unknowingly seeks not a benevolent father but a salvational exterminator. Desperation in space, desperation in the rush of civilization, desperation in the search for existential salvation.
How to portray these three desperations, while also explaining many physical theories in an accessible way, and at the same time criticize the Chinese communist regime, all while maintaining an adventurous atmosphere? The only way that comes to mind is BALANCE and cultural placement with respect to the pattern. The series unfolds in three presented worlds: China in the 60s and 70s, contemporary Great Britain (the added world, as it’s entirely absent from the book in the form presented in the series), and the world of the peculiar Three-Body Game, which must be treated as an alternative multidimensional reality with physical reference to the reality in which players operate. These two planes of China and the game, however, do not dominate over the storyline unfolding on the Isles but complement it. In many series, unfortunately, flashbacks and insertions appear so frequently that individual episodes lose their rhythm. Here, the consistently executed plot develops the story and intuitively connects initially separate threads, dosing information in a way that the viewer’s mind is not left without their regular influx, while still feeling the lurking mystery at the end of the story, which cannot be easily guessed. This is where balance comes in, which does not negate diversity, as seen in the colorful personalities of the characters, from the withdrawn and frightened Auggie Salazar (Eiza González), through the lost between science and psychoactive substances Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo), to the mad and boorish Jack Rooney (John Bradley). These younger characters are accompanied by older ones, perhaps for characterological balance, including the life-experienced cop Da Shi (Benedict Wong), his grim employer Thomas Wade (Liam Cunningham), and the mysterious businessman Mike Evans (Jonathan Pryce).
The most noticeable change from Liu’s text is its ideological and ethnic de-Chinesization. This will probably be felt only by those who have read the novel, and it would be even better if they interacted daily with citizens of the PRC. However, familiarity with the source text is sufficient. Cixin Liu wrote the Three-Body Problem from a distinctly Chinese and imperialistic perspective. However, imperialism should not be confused with communism. Liu exceptionally uncommunistically always praised the individual and pointed out the ignorance and naive trust in ideologies characteristic of the Chinese masses who treated Mao like a God. For the writer, however, the center of the world is China, and the non-collective West is in the background. It is China that faces the possible end of civilization, and China that fights for the survival of humanity as a species. Finally, it is China that, although it once destroyed Western-thinking intellectuals in such a brutal way (Professor Ye Zhetai at the very beginning of the first episode), is now the only chance to preserve human moral and religious individuality. This sinocentric perspective is completely absent in the Netflix series. It has been replaced by a multicultural approach, although China still plays a crucial role in the plot. Presumably, the creators decided that such a cultural placement of the series would facilitate the reception of complex content, including scientific content, and it shouldn’t make it harder for viewers by constructing a fictional world from elements culturally alien to us. However, did this perspective need to be there, considering the series is just an adaptation?
What’s important is that something crucial, which is one of the most important ideologically designed parts of the Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu – the model of human thinking, specifically the transition from faith to knowledge and vice versa – was suggestively preserved. “Sir, are you there? Sir?” It’s worth noting these desperate words spoken by Evans when his God left him to the mercy of unverified faith, and an eye appeared in the sky, blinking miracles to people at the end of civilization.
In this whole interesting production, the only regrettable mistakes are the CGI visualization of the game world and the levitating Day of Judgment tanker on the surface of the sea like a toy, which floats above the gentle waves instead of stirring them (fortunately, not in all shots), the cliché music that doesn’t match the distinctiveness of Game of Thrones, and the not very creative opening credits. Nevertheless, there are enough delights in the series to overlook these shortcomings, which are unfortunately quite common in the world of television productions. Very’s jump into the Cherenkov Tank, the blinking sky with stars, love somewhere in the cold on the Mongolian Steppe, the Fermi paradox, suspense when listening to signals from the radio telescope, catchy game rules related to the ethnic origins of players, the action of the three-sun syzygy
The trend for this genre of literature and film, associated with this particular region, has flourished thanks to the publishing success of Stieg Larsson’s books.
Since attaining bestseller status, among the numerous plots offered every year by Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, or Finnish creators, global audiences are most intrigued by those featuring murder, investigation, and a distinctive social backdrop. In other words, “Scandinavian crime fiction” has become a cultural brand. Lasse Hallström‘s The Hypnotist seems to be another expression of this trend, continuing the easily marketable convention. The problem is that the opportunistic aspect has overshadowed the actual quality of this film.
In The Hypnotist, the narrative suffers from repetitiveness. However, the story begins with a strong impact – a teacher of Chinese martial arts is murdered at school. Subsequently, his family is brutally killed at home. Miraculously, their teenage son survives. Lead investigator Commissioner Joona Linna will consider him an extremely important witness. However, the boy remains in such a critical condition that extracting testimony from him is impossible. The commissioner decides to enlist the help of a renowned psychiatrist, Erik M. Bark, who once practiced hypnosis. His extraordinary abilities are meant to extract crucial information from the sole witness to the crime. Unfortunately, by involving himself in the case, Erik brings danger upon his loved ones… leading to a somewhat unsurprising plot twist and a passive finale.
I mention repetitiveness because despite building the story around the fairly original motif of hypnosis, the film fails to properly utilize it, thus consciously depriving the plot of a significant distinguishing feature. This unique element could have given the film its own personality and set it apart from other typical crime dramas. Instead, it contradicts its title, presenting viewers with an empty product based on generic formulas. Although I haven’t read the literary source material for the film, I have a nagging feeling that more emphasis was given to the motif of hypnosis there.
Furthermore, it’s noticeable in The Hypnotist the presence of too many characteristics typical of Hallström’s previous films. The fact that this director excels in melodrama was proven with The Cider House Rules or Chocolat. His artistic predispositions do not align with a genre characterized by darkness and tension. Consequently, The Hypnotist is imbued with unnecessary sentimentality, which dampens any remaining suspense. I feel that the only reason this author, after years of making films in the States, decided to shoot a crime drama in his home country was not creative intuition, but rather a desire to participate in a popular trend, which often leads to commercial success.
However, it must be emphasized that the latest film by the Swedish director is characterized by meticulous execution. It’s difficult to fault any of the technical aspects of the film. The same goes for the acting. But of course, that’s not enough. The script lacks integrity, and therefore The Hypnotist will be remembered as another distorted echo of the success of the Millennium series… an echo that pretends to be an original and leading sound. I won’t warn against being “hypnotized” by this film because, in fact, the only state it might induce is conscious indifference.