Limbo (1999)

Director: Tina Krause

Screenplay: Tina Krause

Cast: Barron; Suze Daufler; Sean Farrell; Vincent Hager; Jessica Krause; Tina Krause; Mike Lisa; Susan McAnnich; Mike Sand

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #191 / An Abstract List Candidate

 

E=MC² Hammer

Dug up and rediscovered by the American Genre Film Archive and Bleeding Skull, I will add context to Limbo as I go on, as my experience with this film as much is based upon this knowledge as much as the content. What I will say immediately though it that this is a rare shot-on-video film by a female director, Tina Krause was more prolific as a horror Scream Queen even into the currently, including working with W.A.V.E Productions, a company who filmed scripts sent in by their audience which could lead to a lot of fetishes. It is also a film partially originating, literally, from Krause around that era as an actress accidentally ingesting drug laced cake, carrying over her own hallucinogenic experience to Limbo¹.

Limbo, openly, is a one-off which will be difficult for many to appreciate. After a prologue where two people are running at night through the streets, you are thrown into an audio visual barrage which begins at a bar, completely alien to what is usually expected from a shot-on-video film from before, namely a narrative work on a micro-budget. Instead, at the beginning you see this film go in a different direction - cuts to chauvinist bar patrons, where gender politics is a common concern throughout; erratic sound design and the layering of it; eeriness, especially when the film freezes to a long pan past a pool table and its players; and film reel sounds that cut to footage of a stone statue but also a man writhing near a white wall.

In the midst of this is Katherine. She is a haunted woman and those around her are haunted by what is pursuing her. A man only she can see in the bar tells her she has nowhere to hide anymore. It is, plot wise, very difficult to discern as Krause was more interesting in making an "Art House Symphonic" production, actually sold as a vampire film just to be able to push the production ahead even on a micro-budget. What the plot in its few slithers are is vague, but you can see Katherine as a figure from the afterlife, chased by it or once part of, even maiming or killing bystanders deliberately or unintentionally along the way.

The film has its flaws. It is not necessarily the non-linear structure, closer to an art piece than a plotted narrative, and certainly evoking the infamous Nine Inch Nails project Broken (1993), a promotional video that was never released which was a fake snuff film intertwined with music videos for songs. Most of the issues here are in knowledge Limbo took two years to make, on a micro budget, largely filmed in an old abandoned tobacco factory Krause squatted and lived in for ten years, even having to chase out drug dealers mid-shooting with a 2x4 with a nail stuck in it. A film which, for a first time director with some ambition, has to be admired even if with flaws. For me, the only egregious issue in production quality is the sound design, a cacophony between inaudible dialogue and noise which betrays the film, tragic as well because the music throughout is eclectic and memorable, such as a gothic blues rock song that is impactful in a seduction scene which leads to Katherine clearly being a dangerous figure without her realising.

What it is is an art piece and a haze dream smashed together. Krause shows some inspired visual motifs throughout alongside the lo-fi homemade quality, like televisions spiralling within televisions as the camera turns in canted shots, contrasted by material which feels improvised like a digression in a women's bathroom in the bar, feeling closer to behind-the-scenes footage as one of the cast compares herself to Neve Campbell. It is a mood piece whose plot is honestly difficult to describe. It has enough to stand out; there is also a lot that vastly contrasts the kind of films Krause worked in, closer to performance art and underground culture in tone, such as a hellish sequence for Katherine with phosphorescent body paint covered dancers in a darkened room. A lot of the film is drawing on the kind of imagery in other more cohesive horror films, such as the mental asylum sequences with writhing patients likely shot in her tobacco factory home, which Krause makes more weirder and scarier, even if still over-the-top, because of the film looking more homemade and due to time having made the surviving videotape master grimy.

It does come from the heart. It is definitely a bizarre viewing experience, a fever dream on VHS which spits you out at the other end rather than be watched by a viewer. It also has personal details which mean more, including a lot about sexism, of male bar patrons who are ogling the female customers, to one drunk pervert kicked out for molesting the female staff. Sadly, this aspect came out into even making the film, as Krause even had to promote it under the alias "Stephen Krause"to get anyway with this. Particularly with what works here, she is interesting behind the camera. Seeing the later short The Answering Machine (2001) is further evidence of this - a series of answering machine messages between a man and a woman, no one onscreen but just with shots of two phones as a date planned turns sour when just selecting where to eat - and how she could have progressed in her filmmaking.

Limbo is, again, also one of the few of this realm directed by a woman at this time, one of the only other exceptions in the micro budget world being Phobe: The Xenophobic Experiments (1995) by Erica Benedikty, a Canadian cult sci-fi film. Limbo whilst a mess at times is, among a mass of SOV films which can be utter messes too, one with a distinct dark edge and a lot of aspirations. For all that betrays it, a scene of conversation in the public difficult to hear because of the wind, there are also really grotesque but effective moments such as a near nude woman, in a ballerina pose in an open doorway, possibly an actual dancer, having her guts removed. Throughout it does evoke the dark edgy period post-Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails, but it is also very evocative at the same time, something I have not actually seen in these types of films from the decades before in terms of inspiration. The film is an anomaly even in terms of when it was made, adding a greater appreciation. The late nineties into the Millennium was my childhood, and how odd it is at the time I was growing up, with films like Idle Hands (1999) with Seth Green, the pop punk and the nu metal of the new decade, and other such pop culture, this film came and went too in the midst of all this. I was ten when Limbo barely came out, and preserved on a fuzzy transfer, it is strange to see a work completely alien to my childhood memories but definitely of that era, a Goth near-Millennial art genre film in its own erratic pocket.

Abstract Spectrum: Hazy/Mindbender/Non-Linear/Weird

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

 

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1) There will be many references, from the AGFA Blu-Ray release's extras, of the Fantastic Fest Q&A when this film was premiered in 2019 with the director. Rather than just keep tagging this at the bottom, just be aware the really candid and evocative behind-the-scenes gossip in the review is all from Krause's own testimony in this questions and answer session after the film was screened.