A Bertrand Mandico Double Bill: Boro in the Box/Living Still Life (2011/2012)

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Boro in the Box

Screenplay: Bertrand Mandico

Cast: Elina Löwensohn as Walerian Borowczyk (Voiceover) / La mère; Thierry Benoiton as Jerzy; Jacques Malnou as Grand-père; Elise Hote as Emilia; Laure Lapeyre as Olga; Benoît Serre as L'homme du train; Tom Cholat as Boro enfant; Ruben Lulek as Boro enfant; Audrey Le Corre as La muse; Mika'Ela Fisher as Ligia

Synopsis: A perverse tribute, in vignettes in alphabetical and chronological order, which tells an alternative take on the life of controversial Polish animator and director Walerian Borowczyk.

For the occasional dull quasi-art house films I've put up with, MUBI's streaming gift for the most part has been a gift that has been worth the investment. Sadly it has a thirty day time limit on films, including those you may have difficulty ever seeing again, but to bastardise a famous quote it is better to have watched a film than to never have seen it at all, and if that's the way they were able to access some of the titles they've collected, so be it a necessary evil. It's definitely the case as they've introduced me to directors I'd never heard of but fully deserve coverage as filmmakers of the abstract. One was Khavn, the punkish one-man band of Philippine cinema, now there's Bertrand Mandico from France, a French director who made his first short film in 1999 but only really started to become productive in his work from 2010 onwards, only making his theatrical debut with The Wild Boys in 2017 and making short films beforehand. Parallels can be made to Guy Maddin, in his implementation and open influence to older cinema, but he is his own figure and if it was easier to see his work, defining this distinction would be a hell of a lot easier for me.

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We begin with Boro in a Box, his most famous work in which it loosely interprets the life of Polish director Walerian Borowczyk from birth to throughout his career in A-to-Z format, a visible reference to Borowczyk's own short filmmaking like Grandmother's Encyclopaedia (1963). It's a loose interpretation of his life as some eyebrows will be raised high, on display openly its own fantastical and perverse tale where Borowczyk is a man born as a box, a literal Kino-Eye, whose mother has an erotic dalliance with a horse briefly and his career here consists of long warehouses of naked people he films with a living Cronenbergian film camera. Yet wherever Walerian Borowczyk is, he'd probably appreciate the tone, for Borowczyk was a fascinating figure. Beginning in stop motion - (probably the most debatable moment for me is how Mandico dismisses co-director Jan Lenica of the early Polish shorts completely) - Borowczyk was championed for his animation and then his earliest steps into live action feature cinema in the likes of Blanche (1972). Than he was ostracised, until the recent and justly needed critical evaluation in the 2010s, for decades when he switched to erotic cinema with 1973's Immoral Stories, which he stayed in through his career for the most part afterwards but tragically made him a pariah for many, hence that necessary critical evaluation in the 2010s was a vital necessary, making converts like myself when I witnessed his cinema to be precise, full of texture and elegance, sensual and openly transgressive as a virtue.

So he might respect Mandico depicting him, as mention, born as a literal box on an umbilical cord whose limbs and torso grow out when he grows up, an obsessive who films when his father gives him a living camera and tries to find himself in this raw, dirty world of texture, grimness and explicit sexuality. Beautifully shot in black-and-white, but openly perverse from the get-go, Mandico springs out of the gate with his intentions following Boro's conception, his mother with her sister in the woods, playing "angels" where they choke each other half to death until they see them, only for her future husband to appear dressed as a tree and in an uncomfortable blur of molestation and consensual sex seduce her. This transgression, thankfully, is wide and spans further to deliberately offend anyone - between full frontal male and female nudity, Boro having a similar situation with a man in a train cart who'll become his collaborator, his mother (Elina Löwensohn, who also provides Boro's voice in the narration) having a sensual interaction with a horse, which is explicitly referencing Borowczyk's The Beast (1975) both in its human and beast sex and, in the silhouette of phallus, the more shocking moment of that film at the beginning where Borowczyk filmed an actual horse castration onscreen. The transgressive streak, in any other context if the tone was wrong, would offend many but Mandico manages to make it feels appropriate. It would, in another context, rub people the wrong way how Borowczyk is treated but, like when Isabella Rossellini and Guy Maddin depicted her father Roberto as a giant stomach in My Dad Is 100 Years Old (2005), it feels appropriate, here gleefully playing to Borowczyk's desire even before his later erotic films of playing with transgression and subversion.

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Whilst it's a fantasised story, the tale of Boro fits the real man named Borowczyk, who was respected for his animation and art films only to be damned for his turn to erotic cinema, Boro the Box Headed and his living camera here becoming marginalised in his own world as tragically Borowczyk was, but neither compromising. And aesthetically Mandico's work is incredible, a dream-like but grimy world where dirt, salvia, and various forms intermingled with a fetishisation of bodies and objects Borowczyk also had. Mandico's clear trademarks, whilst following from influences, is a pansexual transgression in the nude bodies onscreen, and depicting Boro having a sexual experience on a train with a man who'd assist him with his films. That and the overt fantastical details which are constant throughout, such as the aforementioned camera, or Boro seducing a woman at a young age with feather on sticks coming out of pockets in his box, leading to her nude body as a giant projection over a fireworks display and Boro running below back and forth to bring her to orgasm.

And it's clear, even as the first Bertrand Mandico work I have seen, that starting properly with his career here onwards he's built and honed his craft over many years, only finally making a feature length film in 2017 with The Wild Boys and, like a few favourite directors of mine, using the years to churn out shorts that are obsessed with interests he can draw from with greater depth for later feature films if he so wishes to. Boro's tale, even in only forty minutes, is a life fully fleshed out, from recounting experiencing from inside his mother's womb her falling down a cliff to returning home to his parents one last time after decades in France, and in spite of its short length it argues of being as expansive and dramatic as any film considerably longer then it.

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Living Still Life

Screenplay: Bertrand Mandico

Cast: Elina Löwensohn as Fièvre; Jean-Marc Montmont as L'homme

Living Still Life, quoting Walt Disney is French in an intertitle at the beginning, takes animation to an extreme when a woman named Fièvre (Elina Löwensohn) acquires dead animals in the countryside and animates on a giant canvas in her home. It's immediately eye catching, as befitting the quotation this 2012 short looks like a live action Disney film in colour and bright fantastical flora...only to have an eerie, disturbing yet magical story take place that feels like a dark fairy tale. One where a ritualistic act, done four times over four acts, lead to Mandico actually animating dead animals as stop motion creatures.

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As someone who has brushed against thanatophobia, they are very sobering scenes. Powerful, but knowing (unless an incredible practical effects artist was involve) that real animal corpses were used effected even me and would definitely be unsettling for some, worthy of warning even if the character of Fièvre attaches flowers to the burst open stomach of a dog. As with Boro in the Box, the production is incredible, also even in terms of the music in his work, between the at-times creepy score used for Boro in the Box to here appropriately magical but befitting its effective content. All of this builds to when Fièvre comes aware of a man who spies on her through the acts, someone who [Spoiler Alert] wants her to animate his recently deceased wife, synchronising to her own fantasy of animating a dead woman she directly tells the audience in the first scene of the short. [Spoiler Ends]

It would be criminal not to mention actress Elina Löwensohn at this point, effectively his muse since she started working in his films since Boro in the Box to The Wild Boys. Already a striking figure physically and as an actress in the performances, I was surprised when something clicked in my memory and realised she was the titular Nadja of Michael Almereyda's 1994 spin on the vampire story, having gone from that film over the years into a fascinating run of films with the likes of Hal Hartley to a variety of idiosyncratic directors, the kind of career that'd get ignored barring a few major films like Schindler's List (1993) but for those in the know (and when you see films like Living Still Life) command respect especially as she is great in both Mandico films I am covering. That she works with Mandico now is proof of his abilities, as Boro in the Box demanded a lot from her beyond the nude scenes whilst still treating her toroles actors would die for, in a mere short like Living Still Life providing a complicated character in just a short amount of time. Together, alongside Boro in the Box, it paints a great painting of the pair as collaborators.

Abstract Spectrum:

Boro in the Box: Fantastical/Grotesque/Surreal

Living Still Life: Eerie/Fantastical

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None):

Boro in the Box: High

Living Still Life: None

Personal Opinion:

In just two shorts, Bertrand Mandico stood out and immediately won me over with his work. I only hope The Wild Boys, his theatrical length debut, makes his work more easily accessible in the future. 

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Climax (2018)

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Director: Gaspar Noé

Screenplay: Gaspar Noé

Cast: Sofia Boutella as Selva, Romain Guillermic as David, Souheila Yacoub as Lou, Kiddy Smile as Daddy, Claude Gajan Maull as Emmanuelle, Giselle Palmer as Gazelle, Taylor Kastle as Taylor, Thea Carla Schott as Psyche, Sharleen Temple as Ivana, Lea Vlamos as Lea, Alaia Alsafir as Alaya, Kendall Mugler as Rocket, Lakdhar Dridi as Riley, Adrien Sissoko as Omar, Mamadou Bathily as Bats, Alou Sidibe as Alou, Ashley Biscette as Ashley, Vince Galliot Cumant as Tito, Sarah Belala as Jennifer

Synopsis: Set in the nineties, a troupe of dancers is isolated in a building away from civilisation, rehearsing for an American tour. Unfortunately, on the night of the final celebration party, someone has spiked the punch bowl with LSD...

[Spoilers Throughout]

Climax is a difficult film to judge. I am glad, for the first time I have seen a Gasper Noé film in the cinema, to have seen Climax on the big screen. My emotions may seem contradictory or even erratic however. The truth is that Climax itself is a fascinating film, one certainly memorable and rewarding if bad descents into hallucinatory hell are your desired prize, but leavened in artistic and moral flaws which directors like Gasper Noé need to be slapped out of doing lest they become boring, artistically problematic and a waste of time. The truth is Climax is a film I admire, but I'm sick of this nihilistic extremist cinema as it's now a few decades when Noé and his type started in the nineties, now to the point it's becoming gauche and artistically drying out. It's not surprising, among his contemporaries of the French Extremist movement, Bruno Dumont went into comedies, and the moment Noé's incredible technical style fails to win you over, he'll hit a backlash from fans whether the films are good or not for justifiable reasons.

Of course there's also the issue that with so many films as bleak as Climax existing, one has to ask if there's a detrimental effect on viewers which needs to be started to steered away from, a destructive influence subconsciously which Noé shouldn't be blamed for, but finds himself unfortunately within when so many films take on this sense of nihilism of the human species as Climax does, imagining that when acid ends up in the punch bowl, a group of dancers end up descending into madness, already established as petty and sex obsession in many cases before they've had the Mickey Finn. The stranger thing is that, despite being very basic to a potential fault, merely about this scenario with just some semblance of character building in-between, Climax has had very positive reviews even from critics who'd probably hate him, which makes this concern more significant to bring up now. I cannot for the life of me, in honesty, see how the film's gotten so many 5 star reviews on Letterboxd, let alone from professional critics, but I admit as much as my concern with Noé spinning his wheels tiredly is tempered with admiration with what Climax does get right.

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Structurally, I've always admired Noé, who has completely disregarded the conventions of how even opening and ending credits are presented, here as well the opening credits the ending ones, as well as that you only get the proper opening credits, visual symbols for staff like Enter the Void (2009), after a long time with the characters already in this hellish chamber piece and the LSD in the punchbowl finally kicks in. And for a beginning, Climax starts very well, beginning with video interviews for each character, surrounded by books on the left and videotapes on the right of the television screen where they're played I was rubber necking to get all of, of every character and a little about them. The initial set-up, bookended by legitimately well performed and shot dance sequences which suggests a new calling for Noé, are the best moments of the film, catty dialogue between dancers which Noé intercuts between different people and topics of conversation with a clear sense of geography, even able to walk a tight rope with some of the dialogue being incredibly un-PC and potentially offensive as well as much of it being funny too. Noticeably, alongside being a great group of dancers alongside actress Sofia Boutella, the cast's diverseness is of note when many films do not have this varied a group in characters let alone casting - Muslim, Caucasian and black, German emigrate, gay and heterosexual dancers, possibly bisexual members of the trope, male and female, alongside a brother and sister, and a mother who is a former dancer with her young son. It's a varied group, all idiosyncratic to an advantage, and knowing the film was not a long production and used a lot of improvisation has actually led to some of the most interesting dialogue moments from Gasper Noé. Frankly, his dialogue and characterisation has always been his greatest enemy, so this advantage here is one he should probably stick to from now on.

The film's divisive nature for me is when the LSD kicks in, when Noé's worst tendencies (as with all "extreme" directors) to tack on violence and showing human beings as awful creatures. It's trite, and between a pregnant member of the dance troupe being battered about to the signposted Chekov's electrical panel with a small child, Noé's nastiness is his worse vice. Neither were the cryptic intertitles with their amateur philosophy going to win any favours, as Noé is not Jean Luc-Godard, his flirtatious with this from Irreversible (2002) on always mockable as if he started wearing a beret in publicity shoots. And with this you also get the major catch with him as well that, described as the William Castle of extremist cinema, his ballyhoo alongside his nihilism causes me to roll my eyes as much as find moments to admire him. He's survived as much by his hyper visual style, as with many extremist directors, but if he slipped he'll be utterly pretentious and offensive. Hence why I always preferred Enter the Void, his one great film which for its flaws is admirable for being a truly unique and idiosyncratic one-off anyone should experience.

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Climax has passages which could've been the same - if Noé wasn't obsessed with the degradation, the visual experience of a terrible LSD trip as executed with the help with cinematographer Benoît Debie would've be exceptional. The quiet, languid nightmare we have for passages, shot in what feels like one takes with hidden cuts, usually following actress Boutella as she is trying to keep her sanity but lapsing into freak outs, would've been enough by itself without trying to replicate Possession (1981) and one of its infamous scenes or the crasser tangents. In fact, because of this, Climax misses out a huge idea except for moments in how, as dancers, the group becomes accidentally involved in a giant ritual. As the narcotics cause them to move in choreographed ways, their worse thoughts coming out or sexual passion to appear or for them to become stuck in ritualised moments stood on the spot in a random corridor, the film is at its best alongside the atmospheric harsh coloured lighting and the soundtrack, skipping between time appropriate songs by the likes of Daft Punk and Aphex Twin which suit each moment.

Instead Climax becomes over-the-top and even Debie, one of the my favourite cinematographers, contributes to one of the worse creative decisions of the film by having the entire ending depicting in an upside-down camera shot. On a giant cinema screen, it's a terrible creative design where you cannot absorb the visual information as necessary and it's also obnoxious. Bad decisions like this plague Noé's career a lot, and alongside how tiring his 'fuck-the-world' nihilism is, especially now he's in his fifties, I find myself stuck between Climax's virtues but also his terrible creative decisions and poor viewpoints of humanity by way of exploitative content. It's an issue to raise with those who helped him - Vice Magazine contributing to a producer's credit, Arrow Film distributing the film in the Uk - as there could be a point where people have had enough of Gasper Noé's style, not sustaining enough good moments, and start jerrying them as a result. More so as more rewarding and braver directors I've found - [as of 2018 the likes of Philippine's Khavn to France's Bertrand Mandico] - don't get this level of distribution and hype when they probably deserve instead of Noé.

Abstract Spectrum: Hallucinatory/Nightmarish/Psychotronic

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

Personal Opinion:

Gasper Noé is someone I will have to talk about in terms of abstract cinema, especially as the best moments of Climax are appropriately freakish and potent. The worst moments of Climax however show I will only write of Gasper Noé in a begrudging manner, a man whose portrait appears when you look for "frustrating" in the dictionary.  

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Non-Abstract Review: Tokyo Vampire Hotel (2017)

Director: Sion Sono

Screenplay: Sion Sono

Cast: Ami Tomite as Manami; Yumi Adachi as Empress; Megumi Kagurazaka as Elizabeth Báthory; Kaho as K; Shinnosuke Mitsushima as Yamada; Akihiro Kitamura as Gen; Ayumu Yokuyama as Dre

Synopsis: The last days of humanity are upon us, as a centuries old conflict between two clans of vampires, the Dracula clan and the Corvin clan, escalates when the Corvins plan to trap a small group of humans as their permanent, cultivatable food source. In the midst of this is Manami (Ami Tomite), who finds herself pulled from ordinary human life when she learns she has the blood of Dracula within herself.

[Spoilers Ahead]

A great sense of excitement was felt finally seeing Tokyo Vampire Hotel. Also trepidation to be honest as, considering Sion Sono has had a spottier record from 2010 onwards, this could've turned into a dud. It neither helps that, out of the gate, the first episode of his Amazon Prime commissioned mini-series is terrible. It set up all the worst aspects of Sono that have come up in his work over the last few years, an abrupt jump into a world full of clichéd horror tropes made worse by the sci-fi touches added. The grotesque violence Sono has in his films is here too and is awful, problematic in how it gleefully delights in a woman in a Goth Lolita dress entering a restaurant with firearms and killing the human beings with relish after dealing with a group of vampires, the flippantness and "coolness" off-putting in works like this even as someone who defends transgressive and ero-guro tropes in art, boredom as well when she excessively stabs a person or two with a fork over and over to death. Thankfully, blissfully, Tokyo Vampire Hotel is not this pilot episode. It's still excessively gory, and gets more over-the-top in the amount of fake blood spilt, but it also returns to the type of films I liked by Sono in Strange Circus (2005) or Suicide Club (2001), strange tales with tangents where genre tropes get mangled in weird and fascinating ways.

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It helps this is a mini-series. I have no idea what the feature length version, which cuts this ten episode series down to 142 minitues (!) would be like, but the mini-series as a whole feels less like the stereotype of cult content that is sold to Western viewers but closer to the sincerer Japanese genre films, ironic considering this was sponsored for Western viewers, but probably influenced by the length of the material, forcing Sono's hand in having to have more than the gore on display. At least from episode two onwards the series already gets interesting, skipping years earlier to a human girl given the blood of Dracula being raised in an adoptive family, specifically losers chosen by a literal neighbourhood of vampires to take care of her or they got quickly replaced with other foster parents. From there, weaving the life of Manimi, cursed to been changed by her vampire's blood on her 22nd birthday, and the conflict between the Dracula and Corvin clans, it used its length to expand to include more side characters and events. It can intercut the action and gore with more personality building dialogue scenes, drama which was found in the likes of Suicide Club and made Sono's films stand out as much as his lurid and bizarre set pieces.

The material itself is generic on the surface, vampires versus vampires with a special "one" figure in the centre. Unleashed onto an unsuspecting Amazon Prime viewership this would be weird by itself, especially as Sono now is decorating his films in bold primary colours post-Antiporno (2016), appearing especially for the main building the film is set in, the titular hotel which is actually the lower half of one of the Corvin vampire elders, her children feeding her through a hole in herself what cannot help but come off with vaguely sexual in connotations. What I was glad for however is that, lost in his films over the last few years but flourishing here again, is his eccentricity which is fed by the longer template for the storytelling. The actual plot - that the Corvin clan have humans trapped, pretending a nuclear winter has taken place outside to force them to copulate and breed as their cattle - is merely a backdrop for all these characters, even the villains, to have quirks and issues to deal with. Little touches, like the announcer at the Corvin's lair being way too enthusiastic as he order humans to procreate, or the fact he can still have moments of actual seriousness in-between, mean a lot more when in the last few films I've seen he's not been able to balance seriousness and humour properly as he could in epics like Love Exposure (2008). That this is a major step for Sion Sono in terms of the mainstream spotlight was likely a factor as, befitting the material, he convinced Amazon Prime to let the production shot in Romania too which proved to be in favour of the film, the use of real castles and the Salina Turda salt mine proving worthy production design without much hassle.

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The series could've been fewer episodes actually, as the middle episodes can lag at points or repeating events like the humans trying to escape the hotel multiple times, but the size of the cast allows interesting factors to come into play nonetheless. That even the villains have sympathies is successful even if it's a few more character details rather than in-depth - one of the main Corvin clan members, Yamada (Shinnosuke Mitsushima), was given by his father to the clan in exchange for a political career where he becomes president of Japan in the current time period, enforcing a hatred of life only softened by his romance with Elizabeth Báthory (Megumi Kagurazaka, Sono's wife and argubly muse). In contrast, the Dracula clan and others have an amorality which, despite my issues within the first episode, plays to interesting dynamics, such as with K (Kaho), a Dracula clan member with both sympathy but also utterly ruthless, making her relationship with Manami, the figure stuck with horrifying abilities about to grow on her twenty second birthday, more complicated. There's also humour, as in the case of Báthory's "mother", depicted rarely with the actress in normal form, but either as a head inside a practical effect or a shrunken stop motion not as tall as a doll's house. Even the whole factor of one of Corvin clan being the actual hotel is played with a legitimately (but well executed) spectacle in between her walls, witnessing the humans fed into her in a never ending orgy of stabbing and smearing blood on themselves that, barring one change in the lighting style, would be if you let Gasper Noe direct the Dante's Inferno.

The moment Tokyo Vampire Hotel fully succeeds however is when, out of ten episodes, episode seven has the actual climatic battle, most of the episode a bloody spectacle where almost every major figure dies at the end. The last three, less than thirty minutes each, leave survivors both of the human and vampire sides awkwardly picking up the pieces of their lives in the hotel, without masters and eventually eating at the makeshift restaurant in the centre hall with a comradery of friendship, staying locked in the hotel as their whole world. Even if there is still insidious plans afoot, these last three episodes are why I eventually liked the whole mini-series entirely, building upon characters (the tragic victim of circumstance in Manami, a new character who is the only teenager among adults who questions her environment) to a chamber piece which adds a great deal. Including a pitch perfect end twist which is hilarious, where the least expected people barge through a door, looking like an actual pair of old men than police officers, and an ending which dabbles in the metaphorical in a way that was completely perfect. This conclusion was exactly the right way to end Tokyo Vampire Hotel, and proved a relief having found myself disillusioned in terms of the quality of Sion Sono's recent output. This mini-series, probably the work more will see over others, has proven then successful for his reputation and for individuals like myself who yearned for those older titles in his filmography.

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The Evil Within (2017)

Director: Andrew Getty

Screenplay: Andrew Getty

Cast: Frederick Koehler as Dennis Peterson, Sean Patrick Flanery as John Peterson, Dina Meyer as Lydia, Michael Berryman as Cadaver, Kim Darby as Mildy Torres, Francis Guinan as Dr. Preston, Brianna Brown as Susan, Tim Bagley as Pete

Synopsis: After being plagued with nightmares, the special-needs disabled Dennis Peterson (Frederick Koehler) finds them to become more hellish when his older brother John (Sean Patrick Flanery) finds an old mirror in their home, his reflection starting to convince him to kill to get rid of the bad dreams. As John deals with the effect of having to care for Dennis is straining his relationship with his girlfriend Lydia (Dina Meyer), Dennis is being pushed further into horrifying crimes least he is plagued with worse nightmares when he tries to stop his actions.

[Spoiler Warnings Throughout]

The back story of The Evil Within is compelling, as much to do because it is but a piece connected to the Getty family, beginning with J. Paul Getty, the founder of the Getty Oil Company, one which has been marked by tragedy and incident yet has had a strange, constant connection to cinema in odd circumstances. The kidnapping of his grandson John Paul Getty III has been interpreted through Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World (2017) and the first season of Trust (2018), Simon Beaufoy, Danny Boyle and Christian Colson's project about the Getty family. John Paul Getty III himself starred in a few films including Raul Ruiz's horror-drama The Territory (1981) only for a stroke to drastically incapacitate him physically before an early death at 54. (His own son Balthazar Getty is, to my surprise, the same actor who stars in one of my own favourite films, David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997) as the man Bill Pullman turns into mid-way through, adding to the Gettys' cinematic connections). And then there is Andrew Getty, the subject of this review and the director-writer of The Evil Within, who took over fifteen years to make a film fed on his real nightmares, costing over $5 million (maybe more) of his own money to try to complete, and who tragically himself would die at the age 47 with the film having to be finished by producer-editor Michael Luceri.

For me, The Evil Within was always of immense fascinating and something I was dying to see, realising I am as much a vicarious film viewer of other people and how a film is of their own personality as much as good cinema. Getty's mix of amateurism but with the sacrifice (to the point of crippling himself financially) to have actual, jaw dropping scenes rarely found in modern horror cinema was of interest. I am also aware, clearly troubled and a meth addict whose drug influenced lifestyle contributed to his early demise, The Evil Within comes with a sadness that cannot be treated in a crass way, with respect to the dead regardless of my opinions of the final product when I finally saw it. There's also the issue, even with an acclaimed filmmaker like Orson Welles with The Other Side of the Wind (2018), that whenever there is a project without the original creator's involvement to finish it, rebuilding a film to a cohesive whole from the existing materials will both be difficult and with loose ends, and especially in this case factors existing where the result will be chaotic and raw due to Getty's constant tinkering and the issues he had, a sense frankly he may have never even finished the film if he was still alive, just at a stage of constant perfectionism to a point it would've never been perfect for him to conclude.

And my God, The Evil Within is both a car crash but also such a compelling one deserving interest for all those fifteen years plus... the initial dream sequence starts with a voice over (with very idiosyncratic dialogue) and a legitimately inspired attempt to show the disruptive, varying qualities of dream logic as experienced, the Surrealist in me having to applaud it for the ambition. All of this is followed by a dream in a theme park within the desert with both the absurd (an adult voice over speaking the words of a little boy, Michael Berryman in a fake wig and moustache as a haunted house ride attendant) and the disturbing seen, as a ride with no scares and the boy feeling ripped off leads to his mother having lips for eyes.

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After this, into the story properly, you do have to contend with a story which is strange and ill thought-out, drifting into tangents never making sense. There is also immediately, impossible to pass, that it is about a man with a learning disability (played by Frederick Koehler) that becomes a serial killer and is played in a way that dangerously veers to what Tropic Thunder (2008) parodied with the Simple Jack running gag. As someone with a learning disability, autism, whilst I do not represent every individual with a physical or learning disability, I'll be the first person to be concerned about representation. Koehler's performance is curious, on one hand trying (especially, as he himself has admitted, he is playing as aspects of the director himself) but on the other showing an overripe portrayal which is complicated by a lot of personal material clearly being filtered through the character. Thankfully, this isn't like Twisted Nerve (1968), a British exploitation film most know for the main theme borrowed for the Kill Bill films but forget suggested people with Down's Syndrome were freakish deviants; a film like The Evil Within in contrast is merely misguided with its earnestness rather than deplorable.

It's also established that Dennis Peterson is being forced into these murders, starting with animals than to children and so forth, because his evil reflection is tormenting him with dreams. Due to the nature of the production, this does get convoluted. Ultimately its revealed his older brother as a child caused his disability, brain damage due to pushing him down the stairs and the lasting injuries, causing immesne guilt for him and looking after Dennis from then on, complicating (i.e. muddying) the focus. This alongside his evil reflection (actually Berryman as Legion, the being of many forms from the Bible) using very peculiar arguments to convince Dennis to both murder and take up taxidermy, never in the mean time explaining Legion's origins or why Legion is obsessed with this course of action. That it is Legion, a clear Biblical reference in one moment of dialogue, never gets taken any further and, alongside the "puppet show" that ends the film, makes the trajectory for Dennis and the motifs complicated, not offensive just confused if you try to think about it too much.

The logic of The Evil Within is both its greatest flaw but, alongside its more phantasmagoric moments, why it's compelling in the first place. Whilst the plot moves forwards conventionally, how it goes ahead is both effected by the chaotic origins of the material and a perplexing tone likely fed by Andrew Getty being an amateur to actually making a horror film.  If anything, as a psychodrama rife in clichés, its strange in a fascinating way, with his older brother having a romantic relationship with Lydia (played by Dina Meyer from Starship Troopers (1997)), one where the burden of John having to look after Dennis is causing a strain on both sides in the midst of this horror film, all tinged with the sense this film exists within its own logic as a result.

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Plenty of moments exhibit this - the bizarre plot thread that, without being noticed, Dennis has killed everyone John knows teasing to an almost Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibe, emphasised especially as when John presumes he's about to bump into his psychologist but instead enrages a patron, a man of similar dress but incredibly tall with gigantism, the late actor and tallest actor according to the Guinness World Records known as Matthew McGrory, who thinks he's gawking at him as a sideshow exhibition and makes a comment about it back. (His friend, revealing Dennis has indeed been purchasing books on taxidermy and murder, which we know but takes the characters ages to realise rather than a mistake, has a curious mix of fear, perplexion and woodenness to the actor's performance). That entire plot point even suggests a shared dream between Dennis and John which is what takes place when loose strands appear in films; irrational points changing the mood of a film completely.

And then there are the nightmares and practical effects themselves, which are exceptional regardless of everything else. These are the moments in The Evil Within that will burn themselves into your retinas, the money Getty used at least, in his obsessive compulsive perfectionism, rewarding with striking moments. He spent money on the film even for a giant animatronic octopus playing the drums, for a small scene in a sea themed restaurant, so there is a sense that Getty's impulses for spending on the film, as proven, frankly show how much he probably took too long on. However, it also means moments like a mirror trick, with multiple reflections endlessly besides each other, which are incredible or disturbing like a woman contorting spider-like into a horrible monster. That's not even talking of the puppet show that ends the film as, Dennis having used his taxidermy skills to turn victims into materials for a horrifying show including Dina Meyer as a ventriloquist dummy, it turns into something Screaming Mad George would applaud, making for the complete lack of logic to the ending which an exclamation mark. Together it's a twisted, maligned film that's so fatally flawed and visibly scared, but the proceedings are compelling just because of what you witness.

Abstract Spectrum: Bizarre/Grotesque/Nightmarish/Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

Personal Opinion:

Andrew Getty's personal obsession, sadly his only work, is nonetheless a legitimately unique one, where even the clichés and terrible creative decisions possess newly gained specks of madness to them due to the results, aware as a viewer deep personal issues of Getty's life and his tragic death mark the film. This means we should not look lightly on The Evil Within, out of respect for him and for those who still got the film released, but the results themselves are something to speculate about for a long time - as someone who treats cinema as much as delving into peoples' lives, the back story is not the only thing of interest with The Evil Within but adds more context to appreciate Getty's work more so.

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Boogiepop Phantom (2000)

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Director: Takashi Watanabe

Screenplay: Sadayuki Murai

Based on the light novel series by Kouhei Kadono

(Voice) Cast: Mayumi Asano  as Boogiepop, Kyo Nagasawa as Kazuko Suema, Sanae Kobayashi as Manaka Kisaragi, Jun Fukuyama as Manticore Phantom, Rakuto Tochihara as Poom Poom, Kaori Shimizu as Touka Miyashita

A 1000 Anime Crossover

[Major Spoilers Throughout]

Usually there'd be a synopsis but in my personal preference for this review, the plot is itself the first thing to discuss with Boogiepop Phantom. As someone who found this confusing and too difficult as a young fan in his teens, I will say upfront I adored Boogiepop Phantom revisiting the twelve episode series and think it's one of the better horror anime series ever made. If there's a flaw however, and it's a big one that you have to completely excise to have this opinion, and that that it's unfortunately that to completely understand what the hell is going on is entirely based on this 2000 series being actually a sequel to the original source material, Boogiepop and Others by Kouhei Kadono, and continues on from itself regardless of knowing that material's set up. (There was, before you the reader ask, a live action adaptation of said original light novel). I find however that, really, this big flaw is less to do with the gaps in the plot left, which I will admit could be irritating for some, but that when Boogiepop Phantom is itself a great psychological horror series with an emphasis more on drama and human psychology, with some sci-fi tropes emphasised as it goes along, the issue for me is that Kadono's source material in the few references you get feels far less interesting and comes off as a prototype of the bad and convoluted light novel source materials I've encountered obsessed with over elaborating lore. There's less interest for me that the phantoms and monsters in this series all stem from when an alien named Echoes lands on Earth, but that the scientists stupid enough to create a serum and various failed entities like a "Manticore", a human eating entity stalking this unnamed Japanese city, from this being kick start this more interesting series of character dramas wrapped around a central plot.

There are a few details which never get explained in this series and clearly come from the prequel - particularly the figures vaguely seen in the catalyst for this entire series, a pillar of light caused during a fight which is the first thing we witness in this series and is the beginning of it even if said series skips up to five and seven years before that moment. Barring this, and some details like the Manticore's origins, are frankly superfluous when a meaty tale is presented to you instead. Even the little unexplained or vaguely explained details, as various non-human and human figures encroach this city, do not need the source material as it feels like the series give enough to be intrigued. There is of course the saying film director David Lynch has said where he hates when a mystery is finally explained - and whilst Boogiepop Phantom has a satisfying conclusion, it not only forces you to work with the material in its challenging presentation, but the strange lack of clarity is also as much the series' virtue.

When the pillar of light erupts, causing a brief power cut on the entire city, various individuals across the urbanscape develop unnatural powers, many of them revealed to have been injected with a mysterious serum that a female doctor has acquired and, in an ill advised decision, decided to be a mad scientist with causing untold grief and mayhem as a result. The Manticore, feeding off unsuspecting victims, is haunting the streets and there is also another mysterious entity seeking to the mutated figures to dispose of them. There is also the Boogiepop, a frightening figure viewed as a being of death due to their link to various teenagers disappearing, a figure who could be a figure of good or evil...its revealed that there are actually two Boogiepops wandering the dark streets and underpasses and neither is what you'd expect. Boogiepop Phantom works, especially in lieu of its extreme non-linear storytelling, as its tale even in lieu of its connection to other source material has a lot to still be enticed by, detailed and weird in a compelling way that, juggling so much, it is compelling.

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That you have to work with the series is as much why this is the case, and likely (rightly) this series has a cult status. Boogiepop Phantom is a very demanding series for grasping details from, this series building up to the last episode with patience. A lot of this challenging presentation feels deliberate. That the realistic character designs cause character to look similar to the point you could get confused at times, especially with many cast members for one episode appearances or more. That, due to the aurora that covers the cityscape, the series has a drained colour palette, contrasted noticeably by the final episode with full colour finally appearing. That the structure of the series is completely out of order until the ending, fragments from before the pillar of light takes place, over five to more years before, and immediately onwards after, forcing the viewer to place the pieces together even within the same episode. Characters from the next episode are introduced briefly in the previous, events are seen from different angles and overlap and, were it not for the episodes showing intertitles stating the time and place, this series could've gotten so much harder or more dreamlike then it is. Thankfully, this challenge is why the series has so much mood and personality as it is, especially when it justifies it with the quality with the storytelling.

The series keeps the viewers on their toes, episodic stories which build to the climax with a few noticeable reoccurring characters - Boogiepop, Kazuko Suema who is a high school student who survived mutation killing her and has decided to prowl the streets as a one girl exorcist to stop who is a high school student who has decided to prowl the streets to stop the supernatural events taking place, and figures like Poom Poom, a mysterious little boy in a Pied Piper costume of unnatural origins, or Manaka Kisaragi, a mentally disabled young woman who can created butterflies of light which induce memories, usually painful or locked away, to those they touch.

Through all this, and why Boogiepop Phantom succeeds even if its tied to a more convoluted narrative from the larger source material, is that this is a series built on episodic tales between these figures which are moral fables or tales of real, uncomfortable subject matter amplified by the unnatural entities in this world. Of a slacker whose unhealthy obsession with a younger female co-worker in a restaurant is fed by wanting to turn her into the 2D Moe character in a PC game like a more subservient version of Pygmalion, an unhealthy misogynist fetish fed by the hallucinations of a drug he is completely addicted to. A girl with obsessive compulsive disorder and a complex relationship with a boy she had a crush on that comes to haunt her in the first episode of the series. A guy who can devour the bad memories of others, removing them in a form of amnesia, as they are personified by bugs on their breast he literally consumes and only he can see. That Poom Poom is a literal piper, who can take away a person's inner child with a red balloon to play with him forever in an abandoned theme park, only for those who allowed him to do so, to escape from their current day and their broken dreams, to usually feel more hollow and in one tragic case commit suicide against the piano she was told she wasn't good enough to play.

From https://watchaholics.hu/wp-content/
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These stories are why, even with the issues of the source material, Boogiepop Phantom is a great series everyone should see. One of the best aspects of Japanese horror, even at its most lurid and ridiculous, is that there was never an issue of weaving human drama and ordinary environments into their stories settings. In contrast to a lot of mainstream Western horror which over simplifies this type of drama or even sets the stories in abstract, separate environments - castles, woodland etc. - in much Japanese cinema and storytelling, likely due to the importance of the supernatural in their culture even in urban myths, the unnatural walks among the ordinary public with greater frequency rather than character having to go outside their ordinary environments to be in peril. Particularly with modern horror stories, they also deal with themes of urban alienation, technology's moral issues and pertinent issues like suicide and self harm without any issue as this shows.

Boogiepop is the same only with its unique style, not only its unconventional fragmented aesthetic but also the tools to create its atmosphere. Due to the plot, as mentioned a few times, the colour palette is limited for most of its length. Real life footage is spliced throughout as well that sometimes feels like it was shot on VHS. The music as well is vital to the mood, the score impeccable between actual melody and pure electronic noise. The opening and ending credits songs, whilst they might sound deeply inappropriate, have the right air to them after multiple episodes - the opening song in particular is the best, a lounge romance song which actually becomes more appropriate as the lyrics are suitably melancholic alongside the general tone of the melody, sounding its being played in a dingy bar after midnight.

In fact, watching Boogiepop Phantom is really a testament to why Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) being such a smash hit really proved to be a reward for anime fans. It is completely different in genre but, with its acclaim and notoriety, it did usher in far more unconventional series in tone and story, not just in the mecha genre as the likes of Serial Experiments Lain (1998), the closest to Boogiepop in tone, show which could've only been made because of that 1995 series being such a success. Boogiepop Phantom in particular, even if its speculation from my part, feels like it was deliberately made to be watched by a dazed, narcoleptic otaku after midnight on a tiny television, its difficult plot structure willing to induce a fan base to have it recorded or watched every week and the tone, from the opening lounge song over live action footage of Japanese streets to the horror's more psychological edges, feeling like it would've sucked in some unexpected viewers channel surfing and made converts. Boogiepop Phantom at least was riding the zeitgeist, even into the 2000s, of experimental and bold anime Evangelion let the gates opened for and considering the virtues that Boogiepop shows throughout, its small and constant cult is one I'm gladly part of.

Abstract Spectrum: Dreamlike/Melancholic/Mindbender/Non-Chronological/Surreal

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): High

Personal Opinion:

An absolute pleasure to return to; I had nothing in terms of memory of the series barring my confusion back as a teenager, the desire to return back to Boogiepop Phantom an awareness that as an adult I'd appreciate it far more than before. How right that instinct turned out to be.

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