Director: Ryan Kruger
Year: 2020
Country: South Africa
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Horror/Comedy
Plot:
Waking one morning after a bender, a man comes to find he had been abducted by aliens during the night and implanted with a being in order to experience human life, but the more he tries to keep it a secret the more he wants to utilize his strange powers to help mankind inadvertently risking exposing himself and his mission.
Review:
This was a rather enjoyable if somewhat problematic effort. Among its more engaging aspects is the highly enjoyable and evocative manner of bringing about the abduction and his overall change. The psychedelic imagery present in the sequence, featuring all the flashing lights and impressive imagery to denote the machines surrounding and impaling objects into his body from just about every orifice imaginable is quite enjoyable, making for a much grander and overt arthouse influence to the sequence than just a typical abduction and probing. This arthouse style of deep, probing lighting and ethereal sounds indicating the sights and sounds around him continued throughout here quite frequently and adds another dimension to the film. Alongside the constant notion of his initial unfamiliarity with the new world being played off for shyness and an introverted attitude which means no one knows who or what he really is until it’s too late, there’s a lot to like here both technically and storyline wise.
As well, the film scores quite nicely with the fish-out-of-water concept of how he’s going through the community and what happens to him. From being a hit at the club because he can absorb dozens of party pills without effect that turns him into a dance machine that’s a hit with the ladies, a sexual deviant who’s able to endlessly pleasure anyone he comes across from prostitutes to his own wife in order to get her to stop nagging him and then freeing a group of kids from the hands of a child kidnapper, that he can use his extra abilities for a greater purpose is quite fun and commendable. Graced with a bizarre energy and a likable enough grindhouse aesthetic on top of the arthouse feel, there’s a lot to like with this one.
There are a few issues to be had here. One of its biggest issues is the somewhat unappealing second half that takes a lot of the elements that made the first part really enjoyable and completely drops everything for a random series of events that aren’t that interesting. Hopping around from just random plot points about coming across random street thugs to what his wife believes is a strange illness that’s never followed up or resolved to randomly meeting a child kidnapper and freeing a group of kids from his grasp, this just seems random and sloppy without any kind of structure to it. This all feels completely tacked on and away from what the original story no doubt was like. More to the point, these are quite boring and just not fun at all in the slightest to watch play out, dropping the intensity of the first part into a dull and uninteresting whimper to the finishing point.
Overview: ***/5
One of the more off-beat and unconventional genre efforts of the year, there’s a lot to like here even though a few flaws creep into the film which does bring it down slightly. Give this a chance if you’re a fan of these bizarre, out-of-the-ordinary genre efforts, are curious about the concept or intrigued by the rumors of the film, while those turned off by the flaws should heed caution.
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