🎬 #71 We're Alive!

Some films put you in such panic-stricken, hopeless places that by the end of it you’re glad you made it out alive. Thankfully you can return to your now amazing looking life no matter your circumstances. By sheer contrast, anything is better than what you’ve just watched those characters go through.

This week’s films and filmmakers take us on a hell ride, plummeting us into the depths of anxiety, sweaty palms veiling our squinted eyes. But once it’s all over, we settle into the comfort of reality - leaving us with a profound sense that everything will be ok back here in our real life.

Happy choosing, happy viewing

Bry

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FILM ONE: GREEN ROOM

2015 Dir Jeremy Saulnier

An expertly crafted horror/thriller - Jeremy Saulnier’s follow-up to Blue Ruin takes us deep into hopeless despair.

He manages to capture a sense of dreadful inevitability for the fate of the characters that is quite unique. This is mostly felt through the perfunctory behaviour of the villains. They see the other characters as a mistake to be wiped out, and they’re approaching it the way they’d handle any other mundane issue - like a mechanical problem with a car. They’re almost bored by it - another act of senseless violence they’ve grown so accustomed to that their pulse barely rises. These young people’s deaths are just another item on a tedious to-do list.

The claustrophobic, remote nature of the location and the ‘green room’ itself help the unrelenting, ratcheting tension. The young punk band find themselves firmly behind enemy lines - once they realise they’re playing a gig at a neo-nazi hideout. Things only get worse from there.

Throw into the mix the incredibly realistic handling of the violence and this is a place you’d be grateful to finally claw yourself free from. Too often we’re shown consequence-free violence, but here Saulnier and his team make us smell the iron in the blood and feel the drained - verge-of-fainting-sensation from a sudden sharp injury.

TL;DR Enjoy the tension and intension of a filmmaker geared up to make you wish you never complained about anything your whole life.

*Available for a small rental fee on Amazon, Apple, Google and YouTube in the US as well as the UK.

Fact: This was Anton Yelchin’s last theatrically released film before his tragic death.

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FILM TWO: CLIMAX

2018 Dir Gaspar Noé

People who know Gaspar Noé’s work know that he loves dark intensity. Climax is no different, this is the film that I’ve come closest to fainting while watching it in the cinema. You can tell yourself all you like about how it’s all manufactured, that there’s a camera there, a crew, and actors - it’s cinema, nothing real - still your brain gets caught up in the undulating, constantly moving camera. Taking us through a night in hell as a dancer’s rehearsal gets transformed into something more nightmarish.

The pounding score along with the illusion of a single take makes the scenario feel inescapable. You are along for the ride with the people trapped in the space - unable to alter the reality that you find yourself in. This is a hallucinatory, sickening, compulsive delve into the dark recesses of the mind and I mean that as a compliment.

Once the dawn arrives you’ll find yourself with a totally new appreciation for the day that lies ahead.

TL;DR Gaspar Noé takes us on an unforgettable trip, strap in.

*Available for a small rental fee on Amazon, Apple, Google and YouTube in the US as well as the UK.

Fact: From script to final delivery of the film to the Cannes Film Festival took only 4 months.