wanderlost

This weekend, I attended the Famous Monsters of Filmland convention here in Indianapolis. The whole thing was a blast (I should have a full write-up soonish), but right now, I want to talk about a movie. I know that most of you reading this are horror fans. As fans of this often-maligned genre (occasionally with good reason), we routinely deal with deprecation from others who look down on all horror as slasher flicks and gratuitous nudity. We also deal with... well, slasher flicks and gratuitous nudity. There's nothing wrong with that. I've watched my share of cheesy slasher flicks (and your share, and his share, and that's BEFORE I started intentionally doing it for Jerks in the Back Row) and we've all watched something horrid in the hopes that we'd see some boob. So when you're walking through a con and a guy hands you a flyer for his movie, you generally don't have high hopes. However, if the guy is obviously excited to be there, and takes the time to talk to you (note that I said TO and not AT, that makes a world of difference)... well, it's infectious. That's how myself and my buddy Sean were talked into seeing Wanderlost.

I'm not going to lie, I didn't expect much. The two main images they seemed to be basing their promotion on were a very cool piece of graffiti that put me in mind of Giygas' final form in Earthbound (score one for them) and a shirtless man covered in blood. In my experience, shirtless anyone covered in blood featured prominently is a sign of a cheaply made, poorly acted, horribly shot piece of mindless mayhem. The horror equivalent of a formulaic romantic comedy. A blood-drenched Michael Bay movie, with geysers of gore instead of explosions. Luckily for me (and Sean, and everyone else that went to the screenings) I was very, VERY mistaken.

So, all that exposition and set-up aside, it's time to talk about the movie. Now, I could try and break it down into individual parts, to say it's like Tetsuo: The Iron Man meets Candyman with some Shadowrun sensibilities, and that wouldn't be *too* far off the mark. It also wouldn't be doing the movie justice. If any of those things sound like something you'd like, or that you KNOW you like, just keep that in mind.

Wanderlost resonates. Notice I did NOT clarify that statement. When I say that it resonated with me, that doesn't mean anything. Some people have things resonate with them that no one else feels. For me, it's things like Splatter!: Naked Blood, the Silent Hill movie (which the internet tells me everyone hated), the music of Harry Chapin, tattoos, piercings, etc. Hell, Gary Busey felt that Charles Band's "cookie movie" resonated with him on a deep, spiritual level (other things that resonate with Gary Busey may or may not include other cookie movies, fluffy hair, velvet Elvis paintings, and/or the otherworldly tune of "Red Robin! YUM!"). So resonating with one person doesn't mean much. When I tell you that it resonated with the audience (both the dozen or so who were transfixed, myself included, AND the other dozen that came and went throughout the screening) that's pretty irrelevant as well. If you've ever been to a Rocky Horror Picture Show ...um ...showing, then you know that a horrible movie can reach people. Not to mention godawful plays, poetry, and songs that move no one aside from the creator's friends and family. So even though myself and the rest of the crowd were simply watching in awe, that resonation could be explained away, cheapened, broken down and dissected if one were so inclined. This movie simply resonates. If moments after I post this, every copy, every shred of evidence it ever existed was locked in a chest, buried in concrete, and dropped into the Marianas Trench while everyone who's seen, heard about, or worked on it were killed, it would still resonate. It would lie in that chest, throbbing and buzzing like the cymbal-monkey from that Stephen King story (and all it's derivatives).

So what's it like? Well, it's about a knife, and a drifter, and a shaman, and a graffiti artist, and a dog/coyote, and something that's not quite corporeal enough to be easily categorized. It's implied heavily that a demon is involved. There are allegories and metaphors about the self, about who we are, who we choose to be, and whether or not we face the consequences of our choices. It's about purity, and depravity, and family, and loneliness. It's never quite what you expect. Some shots feel gritty, hopeless, like the film itself is in the same condition as one of the characters. Others are bright, clear, sharp, in direct contrast to the madness, the darkness in the character being seen. My personal favorites are the shots that are just a little grainy, almost (but not quite) overexposed, stark reality... that weird clarity that makes the image more surreal while somehow imbuing it with a sense that if you were actually looking at the scene in person, it would match up more with the enhanced version than a direct representation.

As for specifics, I can't really say too much without giving away the plot. There's very little dialogue. None of the characters sit down and talk to someone as an excuse for exposition. Everything they say is because it's necessary to communicate a specific thought. It's not the words that build the characters, not the dialogue that fills in the blank spots in the world, it's the actions and the scenery. The look on a character's face, the pitch of a laugh, the motion of an arm wielding a can of spray paint.

Which brings us to the shirtless man covered in blood. I think he has 2 lines in the entire movie. We learn what we need to about this character from his actions. The scene in which the promo shot takes place is odd. At first, it felt over-the-top... cheesy, even. Then the scene wore on. It felt wrong. This was NOT a scene that should take this long. It should be over by now, but it's not. It's still going. I felt something during that scene, while I was wondering how long it would last. Hoping it would end soon. I've thought about it, and I realized what that feeling was. Revulsion. Horror fans are a jaded bunch, and I'm no different. I've seen gore, extensive prosthetics, enough fake blood to drown an entire hockey team WHILE on the ice (or possibly make a giant hockey-player-filled ice cube). It wasn't the effects that made me feel it. Not the animalistic, depraved actions of the character, but the very nature of the sequence. We're used to massive gore, only staying on screen long enough to realize what happened, but not long enough to notice the falsities. This scene didn't really have any effects. Some self-mutilation, covered in blood. It was enough for you to realize what was going on, start to understand some of the reasoning... and it wouldn't go away. You had to face it. If you're fighting someone (or boxing, or sparring, or standing too close to the crazy guy at a concert who's performing a dance that looks like he's fighting invisible ninja) and you get punched in the face, it hurts, but that's it. Maybe if it's REALLY bad, you get a concussion. Most horror movies punch you in the face. BAM! Something horrible happens. It hurts for a minute, but then we move on and it slides to the back of our mind, and if it's strong enough to concuss, comes creeping back later on, when you're going for a midnight snack, or taking out the garbage, or trying to figure out what in the hell could be in your empty attic that sounds like rats crawling on the floor and sounds like it's saying your name. This scene is NOT a punch to the face. Simple effects. No exploding heads. No slashed ankles or exploded eyes. No intestines, no viscera, no jagged lumps of flesh. Just a knife and some fake blood. It's a punch to the stomach. Your stomach is strong. You breathe constantly, and your gut gets a workout, even if it's just a little. Hell, you may have some padding. Our minds are strong. A little blood, a knife, that's not scary. That won't resonate. You're not going to have nightmares after that. But it doesn't stop. It just keeps rolling, and every second that goes by and it doesn't end, you realize that getting punched in the stomach is actually pretty bad. You lose your breath from a punch like that. All your meaty bits bundled in safe and sound behind a weave of muscle just got jostled, and now you kind of feel sick. It won't go away.

To me, that's Wanderlost in a nutshell. Anyone can rattle your cage by punching you in the face, making an obscenely accurate model of gore. But to drop you with a gut-punch? To make a shirtless man in fake blood disturbing by the sheer fact that it lingers, it stretches on, it forces you to look at what's happening without admiring the gore, without catching your breathe from jumping at a boo scare... to take that and make you look at it, digest it, understand why it's happening, what implications it has for the people directly and indirectly tied to it... that takes skill. Wanderlost has it.

While you can't see the movie yet, and the trailer (while good) doesn't come close to doing the entire movie justice, http://wanderlostfilm.com/ can at least give you some more to think about.