A small clan of stone-age hunter-gatherers venture into a blasted, barren land in search of a new home. They're led by Adem (Chuku Modu), a steely figure who poses as a saviour but is more of a sociopath. Following him are Geirr (Kit Young), Adem's younger brother and almost polar opposite - scrupulous and indecisive; Adem's very pregnant partner Ave (Iola Evans) and their son Heron (Luna Mwezi); Rounding out the group are the foragers - Beyah (Safia Oakley-Green), a young foundling whom Adem's been eying greedily, and an old, bitter exile by the name of Odal (Arno Luening).
Their expedition is not going well. Food is scarce in this new land, which is hitting pregnant Ave particularly hard. Odal is not afraid to point out how bad things are, and while his family stands behind him, Adem's leadership is constantly, quietly called into question.
The illustrious leader doesn't help things by using his authority as a blunt instrument; Particularly, he gains young Beyah's enmity by borrowing a page from ex-president Trump's book of courting methods and grabbing her by the pussy.
Was this ever a thing? I don't remember it happening in any movie from the eighties, where being a sex pest was often portrayed as an endearing character trait; Thank you, Mr. Trump, for your contributions to popular culture. It's made even more horrible here because Beyah is just going through her first period.
So things aren't looking great even before young Heron is abducted by some unseen threat. His father goes berserk and starts making a series of decisions that end up tearing the group apart. Meanwhile, whatever it is that's lurking in he mists hasn't gone anywhere.
Shot during COVID on desolate Scottish moors, it seems like this film (originally known as, uh, The Origin) has had every bit as rough of a time as the story it portrays. After what must have been a gruelling shot (as someone who once tried to cut through a very small patch of the Scottish highlands, I couldn't help but to wince in sympathy at a few shots of the clan wading through the soggy brush), the film then spent a year and change in limbo before getting unceremoniously dropped on streaming services. It deserves better.
For starters, it's a bleakly beautiful film. Director Andrew Cummings and cinematographer Ben Fordesman make the most of the natural environments they're shooting on; As with any survival tale, the foreboding, inhospitable landscape is as much an antagonist as whatever it is that's stalking our protagonists; When Adem says he'll hunt down something to eat to his starving retinue, the others only have to look around to put the lie to his words.
Fractured sightlines are also used very effectively - the dark just beyond the campfire, whispers and footsteps somewhere in a thick mist, a tense bit of late-film spelunking. Despite some jump scares and the aftermath of a particularly nasty bit of ultraviolence, it's not a horror movie, not in any traditional sense. Think of it more as a tense, slightly depressing indie survival suspense film and you'll probably avoid some disappointment; There's a lot more bickering and scene-setting than meaningful action,
Cummings adds a couple of stylistic flourishes - one of those inverted landscape sweeps that never fails to amuse me; "We're turning your world upside-down... literally!" I imagine the director intoning theatrically while it plays. But hey, I like how it ends up looking, so I shouldn't make fun of it. Other than that there are a few striking panoramic compositions, but it's not a very showy movie. The few fights are chaotic, which fits the material.
The music by Adam Janota Bzowski is also really good, slowly devolving into an atonal mess as it goes along. And the acting's pretty great all around; Oakley-Green, in particular, is intense and very believably fierce.
The script is basic but very solid, with good tension-building from both within and without. I'm also really predisposed to like a movie that a) invents a language for its characters, and b) proceeds to use solely that language, with subtitles for us non-speakers. Ballsy.
There's a fairly heavily-telegraphed twist in the third act that recontextualizes the movie a little bit... and it left me thinking that, given the spread of themes it ends up juggling, the Trumpian reference is very deliberate.
It's not that hard to see the twist coming (the movie being set 45000 years ago actually was a big tip-off for me), and it's more than a little wobbly - the series of contrivances that needed for it to happen the particular way it happens feel pretty manipulative. But it's a decent idea and it adds a welcome kick to the movie when it most needs it.
No comments:
Post a Comment