film profile] - which is screening in the International Competition of the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival (NIFFF) following its premiere at Sundance - unfolds without fanfare, sometimes playing with purest abstraction. Between pagan mysticism and lysergic voyages worthy of a Goa trance party, the latest film by British director
Ben Wheatley probes what it is Mother Earth hides in her depths. What if the powers she possesses deep down, which mankind stopped caring for a very long time ago, were capable of overturning our understanding of the universe?
(The article continues below - Commercial information)
After a very short introduction - we meet one of the film’s protagonists, Martin, a scientist whom we won’t learn much about until the very end, in an improvised laboratory where a group of his colleagues are working on a vaccine to counter a potent virus afflicting the whole world - the films straight away transports us to the heart of a mysterious forest which will act as the backdrop for the entire story. Accompanying Martin on his scientific expedition deep in a forest which is home, we immediately realise, to strange and troubling presences, is a guide called Alma who will get him out of trouble on more than one occasion and who we also don’t know a great deal about. As the two protagonists gradually lose strength and reason, nature slowly begins to awaken, growing ever louder, and eventually becoming a powerful vibration which penetrates Martin and Alma’s bodies to their core. Whilst in the forest, and after being set upon by who knows what kind of presence while sleeping in their tents, the two of them cross paths with a mysterious hermit who offers them help. As in any self-respecting horror film, Martin and Alma accept his offer (albeit with some reservations), though it turns out his motives aren’t entirely altruistic. But, despite the macabre rituals this curious character subjects them to, his intentions remain ambiguous, as if evil weren’t his ultimate objective.