Gus
HOLWERDA (Dir.), Intersect, Black Chalk/Shirley Films, USA, 2020.
If
anyone out there is listening (and can be bothered at all with my two cents’
worth) making a movie of cosmic horror is not accomplished by doing this:
Messing
up the chronology and making the substance of the film incomprehensible does
not make a cosmic horror film; it just makes a mess. As an example, I offer
this case in point.
Where
to start with this? It’s a complete dogs’ breakfast and the acting can only be described as sub-par.
The plot has been cut up and spliced together in reverse order for – reasons –
and it absolutely does not add anything to the narrative at all. A
majority of this film, as a result, is spent examining the childhood eras of
the three main characters, explaining how they came to be the adults that they
are. Listen: if I was at all interested in kids who grow up to fight monsters,
I’d watch “It”; but for all of that vehicle’s woes and errors, this
movie isn’t even that good. Examining the kids’ histories only required
us to learn that one of them could see strange creatures, interlopers from
another dimension, wandering through the Real World – that’s it. But it comes
packaged in a plethora of other extraneous details that – I think – were
supposed to make the adult forms of these people somehow more endearing and
understandable. It did not. Instead, it was an indulgent waste of film stock,
trying to bludgeon us with information that 1) was not necessary to the tale,
2) didn’t need to be dwelt upon at length, and 3) could have been dispensed to
the audience without taking this tedious and bizarre detour.
A
lot of movie makers these days seem to think that busting the chronology makes
their movie ‘edgy’ and ‘cool’; well, I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t. Not
everyone can make “Primer”; hell, not everyone can make “The Prisoner
of Azkaban”. The sooner all these directors and writers figure this out,
the better it will be for everyone. Yes, this film is about a trio of
scientists messing about with the flow of time, but the Beat Generation
hack-job that was done on the script does absolutely nothing to underscore,
stress, or reinforce any of the things that these guys are doing.
Next,
there’s the gibberish. In a horror movie where there’s a bunch of ‘science-y-stuff’
the chief concern of those involved in its production should be that 1) it’s
consistent and that 2) it makes, at the very least, some kind of sense.
Otherwise, the audience will detect flaws in the movie’s logic structures and
those watching who are actually scientists will be rolling their eyes and
looking to the exits. WTF is “tachyon syncopation”? Is mad science just some
kind of cosmic jazz? Please.
At the start of this film – I say start but since everything is going backwards it’s hard to know – we’re told that magnetic radiation affects things going into the Boffins’ time portal. Later we see them stick all kinds of metal things in the portal without a hitch. In fact, we see them send a glass jar with a metal lid, full of glass cat’s eye marbles, through the portal as their first attempt. Obviously, when they said “magnetism” they meant something else, or maybe magnetic forces are just capriciously selective in how they choose to operate. I thought I heard marbles rolling throughout this film; it was actually the eyes of all the people watching it.
There’s an inevitable ‘Our Boffins Meet with
the Press at a Sumptuous Gala’ sequence where a canny Journalist asks pointed
questions. Other directors would use this opportunity to conveniently explain
something of the plot to the viewers but not Mr Holwerda: bizarrely, the
scientist with what passes in this film for ‘social skills’, drags the Journo
away and - we assume - explains things offstage. Eyes rolling once more.
I
never like to criticise a film because of its low budget, and it’s clear that
this thing was made on a shoestring. A clever production crew under the lead of
a director who sees problems as opportunities for creative thinking, makes the
most of these moments. Not here. There’s a graveyard scene in this film that
the director insisted on filming during a rainstorm. Now, a ‘Graveyard in the Rain’ sequence wherein characters express regret and a decision to move forward
despite setbacks, is about as cliched as it comes, and it wasn’t necessary
here, especially as all the blue sky in the background, outside of the scope of
the overhead sprinklers, just made the scene a joke. In many other instances
like this, including the ‘Talk to the Press’ moment mentioned above, “Intersect”
reaches for the hackneyed plot element - the tired trope – thinking that it has
to include these things, and it suffers as a result.
Bottom
line, this is dull fare, hoping that, because the school campus is dressed up
with signs that say “Miskatonic University”, the fans will squeal with
delight and attend en masse. The bad acting, cameos by Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss (eww!),
and clunky effects can’t hide the fact that this is an unoriginal narrative
trying to be way too clever by using the equipment from William Burroughs’
toolkit. I’d recommend that you throw your energies earnestly into time-travel research
because this is two hours of your life that you won’t be able to get back.
One-and-a-half
Tentacled Horrors from me.
