Tags : Cinelogue

…the feeling of watching events unfold with living presence as though we’re inseparable from the Lovecraftian otherness of those things which assault the protagonists; not that we’re holding the camera, but that we’re manipulating the substance of its gaze. This also contributes to the inescapable sense of Toby as a kind of guru for the girls, that his final ‘appearance’ is something simultaneously messianic and evil. The fact that the ending takes place at the home of the grandmother and the filmmakers don’t bother to familiarize us with its boundaries enhances the sense of dislocation; we’ve spent enough time at Julie and Dennis’ home, and especially the girls’ bedroom, to gather our bearings, but here there’s no such luxury: it’s dark and dangerous and Dennis doesn’t even know where the light-switches are.

True, Caesar and his furry kin don’t always look 100% convincing, but I blame that on neither the performance nor the technology. It’s a side effect of the Uncanny Valley Rule, which, in terms of discussing cinema, has come to mean that any attempt to render a realistic human or animal inevitably causes a dissociative reaction in the audience. With Caesar, we’re presented with an ape that looks wholly convincing, but because the role calls for him to do things that are decidedly un-ape-like, we’re constantly snapping in and out of the movie’s fiction. The effect takes some getting used to, especially if you’ve seen less-than-stellar TV clips. But in the context of the movie, Caesar achieves a greater level of realism and relatability than any CG life form that’s come before.

One could argue that Frost’s focus on character and story largely dominated the series, making Lynch’s nightmarish interruptions all the more affective in their brevity and infrequency. It created an aesthetic of a place and its people that was inviting and comfortable, but which could sweep the rug out from under you at any minute, venturing into the heart of darkness and bizarre alternate realities… In the film, Lynch utterly demolishes this relationship. In its place is a brutal, unpleasant, disquieting, and slightly irritating nosedive into the depraved abyss. It reveals that all of the limitations and requirements of TV, from the runtime to the series format, from the censorship to the collaborative nature, may have all been beneficial to the series, Lynch’s vision, and to Lynch himself.

Despite months of rumor and rumors of rumor, 20th Century Fox confirmed Friday that Ridley Scott will not be directing a prequel to Alien.