All this COVID SPIKE stuff has me an a terrible mood.
Not that my mood in important at this moment
what i really mean is that all this loss is difficult to adjust to
and so, like i do, i turn towards writing about film
in search of a way to express what i’m feeling about our collective, entangled realities.
This week I’m watching four films :
Train to Busan (2016) Busanhaeng is Directed by Sang-ho Yeon who co-wrote the screenplay with Joo-Suk Park. This film is one of the best zombie films out there yet. It holds true to the zombie genre by commenting heavily on society and being fun to watch. That the zombies are less scary in the dark is a nice element of their pathologizing the situation. Feels kinda ridiculous to watch a movie like this during a pandemic but so much of this pandemic reminds me of this movie. Like how the government lies about the seriousness of the situation, adding to the already deeply felt sense of confusion and division as people go to their phones and social media to figure out what is real. The hot-masculine-hero theme is a dated trope i could do without and yet I love the acting and the pacing of this film. It’s almost operatic.
Moral of the story: if u don’t want to see me cry at the ending, close the door
Annihilation (2018)
Singularity has never looked less appealing than in this psychological thriller masked as a sci-fi. Dir. by Alex Garland the audience follows a group of scientists into a slowly expanding shimmer field. Inside the shimmer the laws of nature bend into physical anomies. This might be one of few film where the monster is geometry. Sounds hokey yet this film might actually induce weird dreams. The FX plus the jump scares are legit unexpected and delightfully horrifying but what makes it uniquely scary as that it aptly plays with chaos theory and fractals. Since it’s difficult to write about this film without any spoilers I won’t say much here beyond — if you think you can stomach it you gotta watch it for yourself.
Parasite (2019)
Gisaengchung Dir by Bong Joon Ho
Congrats on the win, Georgia. Thanks for reading and, as always, raise hell peacefully,
Anne Arkhane
P.S. later this month I’ll be looking at:
Timecrimes (2007)
Los cronocrímenes Dir by Nacho Vigalondo
Feast (2005) Dir by John Gulager
The Pluck 