2013, Vincenzo Natali (Cube) - Netflix
I recently listened to a podcast/audio drama called Evergreen that left me wholly unsatisfied, and more than a little pissed off. It is one of these scifi tales where pretty much every episode is unresolved ideas combined with non-stop tension, whether it be between characters or in the environment itself. The plot is that a small group of people are trapped inside a self-sustained compound, deep beneath the surface of the planet, when an asteroid destroys all life above. There are non-stop questions, and antagonistic situations, most of which never get resolved: did the asteroid actually hit or was it fabricated by the founder of the compound, what are they "betas" - the failed human clones living in the basement, what was "incomplete" as reported by the founder before he had a aneurism, will the AI take over and kill them all? Question after question after tense situation and every single character did something reprehensible. It annoyed me to no end. And none of the performances nor the ideas presented were enjoyable enough to make the frustrations seem worth it. I don't know why I even finished the podcast.
This movie, which starts as a mysterious time loop, and ends as a ghost story, was much the same. But, at least, I enjoyed the performances and the situation to a degree where I enjoyed the movie, if left entirely unsatisfied by all the unresolved ideas. And I like what it was trying to allude to, even if it didn't answer any of its own questions.
Lisa (Abigail Breslin, Signs) wakes up on the morning, the day before her 16th birthday. She is a typical cranky teen, but quickly we begin to see why. She has been waking up on this morning for a while now. So, loopty loo! But then she starts hearing noises, and she begins questioning why she is trapped. The movie traipses down the haunted house path, kept within the confines of an inescapable time loop story, until suddenly... "I'm dead!" Lisa realizes. Why does she realize that? Who knows, but the fun flip on the teen girl using Ouija to contact... the living girl who currently lives in her house seems to ... inspire her? Soon the loop is not as idyllic as it was, and her dad is acting upset, and everyone is upset and.... the plot kind of disassembles itself after that, introducing an antagonist who murdered women and burned their bodies in the basement, but ... died himself, and now possesses the new owner's father figure to ... kill again? And Dead Edgar (Stephen McHattie, Pontypool) keeps the dead girls from moving on because.... ? And Lisa the ghost summons other ghosts as well as living girl... at this point, I was just along for the ride, enjoying my familiar Canadian faces (Stephen McHattie is always a good Bad Guy) and chalking it up to being better than so much I watch during this season.
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