INDIE SF ROUNDUP - PART TWO
 

Still, The Brendan Corey Storey is hugely entertaining, but for all the wrong reasons I suppose, it being filled to the brim with unintentional laughs. Or is it?

NUMB (Heretic Pictures) comes with impressive cover blurbs. Variety called it “a potent addition to the grand tradition of indie sci-fi” and eFilmCritic describes it as “ethereal”, adding that it “challenges us to decipher what it means to be alive.”

This particular viewer however spent more time trying to decipher what Numb is all about in the first place.

The DVD jacket offers the following plot synopsis: in the future “angels” will be mindless machines created from the computer-scanned bodies of people so desperate for physical immortality they’re willing to die to achieve it. In decaying Yerba City, the only functions of “angels” is to maintain a broken and failing civilization that is hopelessly addicted to a debilitating narcotic known only as the “Drip.”

Anyway, you get full marks if you managed to deduce the above from just watching the movie. It is one of those cases in which the director has a pretty good idea of what he has in mind, but lacks the skills to communicate it to the audience. Pretentious and incomprehensible, the film is shot in Black & White with flashback scenes shot in grainy color. Numb will either strike you as profoundly insightful or unbearably pretentious, depending on your temperament. I found it to be the latter.

In SOUL SEARCHER (www.wysiwygfilms.com) an underpaid municipal worker in London one night witnesses a battle between two super-powered supernatural entities. Death himself happens to one of the battling entities and after dispatching of his opponent, he takes the young municipal worker on as his protégé. In case you were wondering Death is a job that gets passed on from one person to another and you prepare for the job by learning how to Kung Fu fight using a huge scythe.

The biggest problem with Soul Searcher — a British zero-budget fantasy/horror tale — isn’t that it is silly, but that it isn’t silly enough. It tries hard to be serious — a sort of high-minded Highlander — but never realizes the inherent silliness of the material. Instead it is oh so serious, and even hardened Mystery Science Theater 3000 “so bad, it’s good” types will have a tough time appreciating the various going-ons.

The problem lies with the script, which never clearly explains just what the hell is going on and why one should care. The screenplay also makes the mistake of introducing a major character about 50 minutes into the film’s proceedings. Characters are mere ciphers and don’t act like anyone you would ever know. Cheap effects and amateur acting can be written off due to budget constraints, but a good screenplay doesn’t require a huge budget, just some creativity.

Ultimately Soul Searcher is too ambitious for its own good. Few low-budget horror and sci-fi film-makers seems to have learnt the lesson Cube has taught us: if you only have the money for one set, then write your screenplay around the fact that you could only afford one set . . .

Short films

WORMHOLE CHASERS is a quirky off-beat four minutes-long short film by Gregory Zymet about a “wormhole that is going to open in the corner of Marjorie Adam’s apartment.” It’s kinda cute and humorous and worth checking out if you can find it anywhere. Zymet can be contacted at greg@apartment206.com.

GUIDOLON THE GIANT SPACE CHICKEN (www.guidolon.com) clocks in at 11 minutes and offers more weirdness, animated this time by Hugo Award-winning artist Frank Wu. Fans of Japanese Godzilla flicks will “get” it and appreciate it the most. It tells the story of Guidolon the Space Chicken who wants to be acknowledged as a serious artist and not just for his (its?) monster flicks. Wu made the short animated film as a pitch for a TV show. It’s funny, clever and weird — Adult Swim will be idiots if they pass on this one! You can check out the sort at their web site (requires QuickTime 7).