Here are
some brief impressions on the two films I saw on Thursday, August 1st:
This wordy yawner fails to profit from an intriguing premise, growing increasingly irrelevant until the end despite one satisfying plot twist halfway. Shot in a single, annoyingly familiar locale, the film relies on dry, sciency monologues carried out by unconvinced and unconvincing actors. The amateurish mise-en-scène is strictly functional, the photography is bland, there is no sense of pace, and the one most important dramatic issue is vastly underplayed thanks to the dead-eyed actors’ utter lack of credibility. In the end, The Dead Experiment seems like a film school project elaborated over the course of a weekend. And I must insist on the “film school” aspect thereof, because even Roger Corman couldn’t have shot something as underwhelming and forgettable… Long live Walter Paisley!
Chris and
Jacob are two college buddies hellbent on discovering a rejuvenating agent with
the potential to cheat death itself. After some successful tests on a lab rat,
Jacob brings Chris back to life after he has succumbed to a sudden affliction.
But, as one would expect, the serum isn’t fully functional, causing Chris to
“rot” very much like a corpse, forcing the two geniuses to work against the
clock in perfecting their invention. But there’s another player in the
equation: Chris’ foolishly supportive girlfriend Maddie, who will play an
unwilling part in the experiments following a shocking discovery of her own.
Will Chris survive or will Maddie graduate to widowhood? Will Jacob and Chris
remain friends through this ordeal? Will YOU be still awake when the final reel
is installed? The answers to these questions are not worth the painful
sit-down. Trust me. Or read Dread Central’s equally somber review of the film.
White drapes as décor, science as action,
The Dead Experiment as tedium...
Writer/director/producer
Anthony Dixon sure had a lot on his hands here, and his lack of companionship
partly accounts for the dreadful aspect of the final product. After all, there
is something in filmmaking that is called creative collaboration and it tends
to subdue oversized egos and bring water to dry mills. In this case, Dixon
would’ve been wise to seek help to polish his indescribably boring and wordy
screenplay. In turn, a better screenplay could’ve made the entire enterprise
worthwhile in concealing the amateurish mise-en-scène, heightening the dramatic
power of the film, and making it feasible for the limited actors to come across as
three-dimensional characters. As things stand however, the film quickly sinks
into the maelstrom, piloted by a self-indulgent captain unaware of the risks
inherent to the high seas.
Actually,
it doesn’t take that much insight to realize how inappropriate the actors are,
considering the intellectual nature of the premise and the emotional
involvement required by the narrative. One must also realize how unappealing
and tedious it can be to use random medical terms to forward the narrative and
to try and generate excitement amongst viewers. But then, the uninspired
mise-en-scène contributes its fair share to exacerbate the poorness of the screenplay. Boring series of
shots/counter-shots do not help dynamize the exchanges, and the overbid of
science montages does not generate much excitement either. Seeing guys tip over
Erlenmeyer flasks and activate Bunsen burners is not my idea of a good time,
and it DOES NOT give credibility to their pseudo-scientific ramblings. As for
the generic background music, it seems obligatory and stale. So, no redeeming
value whatsoever to be found here from a technical standpoint.
As for the
bland setting, it constitutes yet another major problem. I mean, if one is to
make a film about the worth of life and the unwavering desire to preserve it,
then confining the plot to such a familiar locale seems counter-productive in
that it makes life appear that much more unappealing. It’s quite a shock to the
system, but apartments have grown depressingly cold and empty over the years.
Since people don’t have the culture or the money to adequately furnish their
homes anymore, and since we are slowly becoming cleanliness addicts, it seems
like the dirt and clutter have all but vanished from the anthropocentric houses
of old, leaving us with impersonal living quarters befitting of only the most
conformist and robotic of us. Here, everybody might as well die rather than to live in
such an empty space. Actually, there is no real life to speak of since all the
characters seem awkward and mechanized. Hence, there is no real exaltation of life either, except somewhere deep in the over-bearing script. What’s even more annoying
about this setting however is how unimaginative the whole editing becomes. With each
chapter starting with a shot of Maddie’s front porch, not only does all this
shit feel more and more cyclical, but the boredom of domesticity is constantly summoned, threatening all the grander metaphysical implications of the screenplay. Hell, had there been
one more
transition to the front porch, I would’ve retched… And I still might do, just
thinking about the film.
* Despite an intriguing premise, The
Dead Experiment
turns out to be pure tedium thanks to its amateurish production and
excruciatingly boring screenplay.
Despite its atrociously dated premise, this manipulative family drama is solidly built, with gorgeous photography and a fluid mise-en-scène to boot. The urban settings are oppressive and inextricable, making them as much a part of the ongoing drama as a testimony to the hectic life conditions of the 11,000,000+ denizens of the titular city. Hence, the film poses both as an earnest melodrama and an intriguing travelogue, allowing us to bask in a world whose architecture and language is alien, but whose violence is sadly familiar. Caught in the middle, the family of protagonists represent the archetypical country poor, left vulnerable by the advent of globalized capitalism and forced to trade innocence for a chance at life, no matter how unpalatable or sad that life is.
With the price of rice dwindling, Northern farmers Oscar and Mai are forced to leave their country home to try and find work in the city, so as to provide for their two young daughters. But as one would expect from such a premise, the city is where innocence is lost, where men can only prosper through violence, and where women must prostitute themselves. This is exactly what happens here, with Mai being hired as an exotic dancer and Oscar being recruited as a security agent, protecting armored trucks from rifle-toting thugs. And while the young woman’s ordeal is entirely overdetermined, the protagonist’s new occupation provides fertile ground to develop a high-stake crime caper. This brings another dimension to the screenplay, the confines of which still fail to overlap the rigid Hollywoodian model.
Vibrant and evocative, Metro Manila
offers a slice of life in the city.
Right from
the first shot, it is clear that Metro Manila is a superior film, superior at least to the
homemade brews often associated with genre film festivals. It was indeed
crafted by very capable hands. The photography is gorgeous, and it constantly
fills the screen with highly evocative landscapes, be it the open countryside
or oppressive urban architecture, with all its seedy locales, diminutive apartments,
crowded job centers and dark drinking dens. The precise, intimist mise-en-scène
also helps peg the protagonists in a hostile and confusing environment. With
the family emerging from a compact crowd and trekking along with the camera on
a busy Quezon street during one early scene, their immediate impressions are
instantly crystallized by the director. The disorientation inherent
to their cultural shock is made immediately intelligible. With that sort of
overarching realism, the feeling of authenticity cultivated here is never
compromised, and it more than compensates for the overdetermined premise. With
stellar dramatic lighting to boot, there is no denying the competence of
director/producer/writer/cinematographer Ellis. Were it not for his highly
capable handling of the narrative, Metro Manila could’ve sunk into oblivion amidst a sea of
similar family melodrama.
Expectedly
so, characterization is not the film’s strong suit as there are very few
nuances here. The protagonists are all pure and innocent, while the whole world
around them is corrupt and seedy. There are no exceptions. Even Oscar’s closest
partner on the job turns out to be a crook. This points to a scathing critique
of urban sprawl, but without any of the many shades inherent to contemporary
narratives. Hence, the film works very much like an early Hollywoodian drama,
pitting wholesome country folks against soulless city slickers in a simplistic
showcase of olden values. I wish the screenplay would’ve steered clear of the
most obvious traps begotten from such narrative choices, but it does not,
running head-on with tired conventions in a bid that miserabilism will
magically infer likeability. And while the protagonists ARE somewhat touching
in their ordeal, they seem like little more than archetypes. And that also
affects the music, which crowds the soundtrack with melancholy notes and
provides a syrupy theme song for the angelic family. Definitely not for all
tastes…but merely a dent in the film’s solid façade.
*** The film’s lackluster premise is
redeemed by a quality production that exacerbates the authenticity of its urban
settings.
