Gaia (2021)

Score: 4 / 5

What a delicious film. Its story may not have the heft of a confident storyteller -- despite its ambitious and timely ideas from screenwriter Tertius Kapp -- but under the direction of Jaco Bouwer it manages to perform itself visually. It doesn't take long for us to feel the film, before we really understand what is happening, and that's the mark of great collaboration. Especially with cinematography (here by Jorrie van der Walt). This is the sort of transportive filmmaking even popular and "great" directors spend entire careers trying to achieve. And here it is in an independent release from South Africa in the middle of a pandemic. The big American studios should take note.

Two forest rangers, Gabi and Winston, are patrolling a river in the protected Tsitsikamma Forest, using a drone to survey the surrounding area. We're blessed with a God's eye perspective almost immediately (actually, it's the drone, so...deus ex machina?) as the two isolated rangers paddle slowly through the jungle. When the drone crashes, Gabi is determined to retrieve it and not litter; Winston warns her of the dangers of the jungle. She forges ahead alone (bad idea) and almost instantly begins to suffer the consequences, triggering a trap and getting stabbed right through her foot before wandering into a remote cabin (bad idea) to rest and treat her wound. Meanwhile, Winston hears her scream of pain and ventures into the jungle after her (bad idea) as night falls (bad idea) and encounters terrifying humanoid creatures before becoming apparently infected by fungal spores.

When night falls, a fairly straightforward adventure/survival story shifts into full-blown horror. The forest is alive, a designation realized soon enough through the red lighting and editorial manipulations of our expectations. Stunning visuals show mushrooms and other fungi growing quickly, unfurling their tendrils and oozing forward in almost sentient ways, to say nothing of the creatures which appear not unlike the pirate crew of Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean films due to the amount of mushrooms and moss and things growing on them. Winston, experiencing it all firsthand, catches on really quickly that this is bad; Gabi is slower to understand, sheltered as she may be, but she suspects that the red light and impossible sounds in the jungle indicate the presence of a more cosmic threat. And then the owners of the cabin show up -- a father and son survivalist pair who are utterly terrifying -- and that's when the movie kicks into high gear (as if it wasn't already).

Taking its visual (and, to some extent, narrative) inspiration from the mushrooms, the film's visuals get increasingly trippy and the editing wanders and returns sometimes quickly enough that you feel you're experiencing far more than just a survival story, even as you're not quite sure what exactly is happening. Barend and Stefan, the survivalists, become less terrifying because they seem to know what the mysterious presence in the jungle is and how to navigate around it. When the crazy person becomes understandable or even smart to us, we know the designed horror of the story is settling in; it's all about displacing us from the comfort of audienceship. In many ways, it's a bit like the horrors of Apocalypse Now and Deliverance and even The Mosquito Coast in the characters' isolation and dance with madness. But it also primarily works as an ecological horror film, and would pair nicely (if a little too well) with In the Earth. I also thought a few times of Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Beach House, so if that range of films gives you any idea, this movie is pretty intense and a little bonkers.

Add in the religious and arguably pagan fervor of the survivalists (specifically the father Barend) and the increasingly unhinged dream sequences -- though it's not always clear if they are dreams or not -- and the film reaches for really profound and heady concepts. But no matter how weird the movie gets, its messages are clear (unlike, in that regard, In the Earth): the warnings that we have irreparably damaged the earth will be made manifest and the consequences returned to humankind one way or another. There's an urgency to the proceedings, no doubt fueled by our collective fear of biological annihilation since the COVD-19 pandemic, wherein even isolating oneself in nature is dangerous. People seeking solitude and safety may find something far worse than the crime or disease of urban life: an indifferent and predatory world chewing you up, spitting you out, and forgetting that you even existed.