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Mask of the Evil Apparition (2021)
This short film won't blow your mind, but fry it (in a good way)!
From the fever-pitch edgy and fiercely independent mind and filmmaker that brought us THE CROW, DARK CITY, I, ROBOT, KNOWING and GODS OF EGYPT comes a mind-blowing and mind-bending short film - MASK OF THE EVIL APPARITION - an original made exclusively for Vidiverse.
I probably should not have watched this at 2:15am just before going to bed...who knows what The Strangers will unveil in my dream life. Besides the homage to the iconic DARK CITY mythology and universe, there were moments that made me feel like I was in David Lynch's TWIN PEAKS' Black Lodge. The digital makeup dripping off the female lead, Olivia's face and the accompanying sound design are texturally encroaching, suffocating. As much as you want to shut your eyes, you can't help but be seduced to look forever more in case you miss a single frame. Strangely, watching this doppelganger, parallel universe, interdimensional interpretation of existence through the filter/lens of the human condition...after the pandemic lockdowns...almost make probabilities of its proposed hypothesis feel even stronger. I've always thought there are forces beyond our comprehension...that pull the puppet strings of humankind's existence... And if not so, then certainly the top powers that be are the engineers, architectural orchestrators manipulating masses for some end-purpose of their own making. The digital, virtual sets are astonishing! I LOVED the labyrinth of the mind (intro, end credits and sets)...an infinite "mise-en-abime" scope to it all...very Dali, Buñuel...Surrealist - that endless corridor of "doors" which houses quantum probabilities in which a dream could unfold. Multitudes upon multitudes of "chapters"/portals conjure the unnerving simultaneous sense of something being so alien and yet altogether familiar...in a forgotten time. Are we slaves to our visual alphabets and conventions? Do our senses liberate or imprison us...to the quantum probability of what there could be? Does an ant know who and what we are...and even if it doesn't...what if we're that ant to something else? Loved, LOVED the visual of Olivia being trapped in a glass jar like one might capture an insect...riveting! What do blind people dream of...what is the visual alphabet of an individual that is born into blindness? Do they see less, or more than those born into and experiencing this human incarnation of life through our given biological, cognitive and sensory lexicons? MASK OF THE EVIL APPARITION accomplishes what Alex Proyas does best, catapulting our minds and curiosity into high-octane overdrive...uncovering and diving down a rabbit hole that is 'thought-provoking on steroids'...synonymous with his incomparable narrative, structural and visual signature. This scintillating short is the tip of the iceberg, with lots more interdimensional doorways, portals into epiphanies and mind-bending experiences celebrated on Vidiverse...that leave you begging for more.
Vidiverse is a groundbreaking streaming platform that specializes in gravity-shifting sci-fi and horror genres - and their one-of-a-kind hybrid blends. A top echelon curation of streaming films from around the world, its unique tone exploring kaleidoscopic perspectives is entertainment at its otherworldly best. The descriptive posts on Vidiverse's Facebook page are just as entertaining as they are piercingly informative: allowing you to sponge up its wanderlust lushness, or hone in on what you're in the mood for with target precision. I keep watching all the trailers.
Thank you Vidiverse for creating a specialty niche streaming platform that is not to be watched, but to be experienced. Like MASK OF THE EVIL APPARITION, Vidiverse challenges our minds to forever expand through unquenchable originality.
MASK OF THE EVIL APPARITION is a unique horror/sci-fi hybrid. Grotesque has never been more Beautiful, Poetic and Thought-Provoking!
Alex Proyas - you don't blow my mind, but fry it (in a good way)!
Phobos (2019)
A viscerally-immersive, hypnotically-haunting exploration of 'FEAR'; tapping intravenously into the most intriguing, hidden crevices within the labyrinth of our minds.
Is "Fear" your ally or enemy? "It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure." - Joseph Campbell. "Phobos" means "Fear" in Greek.
The visuals are spellbinding, immersive and viscerally-palpable;...grabbing at the jugular (as Fear does to one)...becoming a powerful narrative design accessing the darkest labyrinths in the subject matter, experienced through the sensory sensibilities and sensitivities of Bonnie Ferguson's character. Although, I feel that she's dancing with an invisible partner, the character of 'Fear' itself. I'm entranced by the hypnotic reflections writing their own metaphysical alchemy on reflective surfaces...like the ceilings in the electronic walkways... turning the trick on the trickster...and reversing convention...allowing the ceiling to "ground" more in what it reflects about our fears and subconscious through its abstractions. Sometimes, it's within the absolute abstraction that we discover an understanding with piercing clarity. Exploring labyrinths of the mind by giving it a face through the settings of suffocating, encroaching corridors like a simulated lab maze the "subject" has to navigate through and within...it really did something to my own pulse rate and anxiety. Alex Proyas celebrates his masterful understanding, creation and implementation of a film language that "induces" feeling the story and its subject(s), rather than merely observing...incredible! The labyrinth of corridors, walkways, tunnels, underground train platforms collectively feel as if they give "a face" to a complex, multi-layered foliage, network, organic vascularity of your most invisible and pan-suffocating protagonist "Fear" itself. The B/W enhances the internal battle of the light and dark at the core of our being, and highlights the chiaroscuro that itself feels like a character...the embodiment of a suffocating fear, paranoia... The voice-overs of he who "conducts" the experimental observation...another race...an "outsider" of sorts(?) is a haunting character that forever presides through lateral time...a fascinating layer of consciousness that informs as he intrigues, questions rhetorically in an organic manner...and very subtly challenges your own thought processes. Its sound design induces an otherworldly seduction which identifies what is blind to us through the relativity of our sensory lexicon and cognizant process. Some perceive our cognizant process as a "controlled hallucination"...which is beautifully given reference to (through the DP work) when the "focus"/ understanding/ perception ..."blurs"...and what that may say about Fear itself as an agent in our lives...and what it does. Perhaps the "blur" is the clarity somehow...?
PHOBOS is a riveting exploration into 'Fear' as an evolutionary character within ourselves...within our DNA and its memory, being simultaneously a driving and regressive force, a life-carving and altering 'gravitational push and pull' within our internal cosmos. It's a cinematic awakening into how Fear proves to be both the Hope and Peril of our being. Following on the auteur director's signature, mind-blowing style, PHOBOS explores the hijacking of our cognizance and induced fear through mass culture and its diverse portals. The iconography is seductive as it is powerfully evocative: including iconic, cultural references 'Saturn Devouring His Son', 'Guernica' and Munch's 'The Scream' - to mention a few - in that visual slipstream of cutaway referentials that galvanize an arresting narrative design, hinting at how dots connect and weave a consciousness that induces "the prison of Fear". Even more haunting are the cuts in the end as she's walking... It makes us sense her fear...that she in fact fears the possibility/ies of her own quantum potential... Indeed the greatest fear is the fear within ourselves...the fear most relative to us...and no external "monster" could ever top that... The only thing to fear in the (in)human condition...is well...'Fear' itself. Alex Proyas weaves a narrative design through the marriage of image and sound, pace, settings, costume and makeup designs...in a spellbinding, seductive, haunting...and ultimately interrogative manner! Fear is the greatest ally the master puppeteer has to execute mass subjugation;...whoever owns the "arena"...owns the masses (ref: GLADIATOR)...
Phobos (2019)
A viscerally-immersive, hypnotically-haunting exploration of 'FEAR'; tapping intravenously into the most intriguing, hidden crevices within the labyrinth of our minds.
Is "Fear" your ally or enemy? "It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure." - Joseph Campbell. "Phobos" means "Fear" in Greek.
The visuals are spellbinding, immersive and viscerally-palpable;...grabbing at the jugular (as Fear does to one)...becoming a powerful narrative design accessing the darkest labyrinths in the subject matter, experienced through the sensory sensibilities and sensitivities of Bonnie Ferguson's character. Although, I feel that she's dancing with an invisible partner, the character of 'Fear' itself. I'm entranced by the hypnotic reflections writing their own metaphysical alchemy on reflective surfaces...like the ceilings in the electronic walkways... turning the trick on the trickster...and reversing convention...allowing the ceiling to "ground" more in what it reflects about our fears and subconscious through its abstractions. Sometimes, it's within the absolute abstraction that we discover an understanding with piercing clarity. Exploring labyrinths of the mind by giving it a face through the settings of suffocating, encroaching corridors like a simulated lab maze the "subject" has to navigate through and within...it really did something to my own pulse rate and anxiety. Alex Proyas celebrates his masterful understanding, creation and implementation of a film language that "induces" feeling the story and its subject(s), rather than merely observing...incredible! The labyrinth of corridors, walkways, tunnels, underground train platforms collectively feel as if they give "a face" to a complex, multi-layered foliage, network, organic vascularity of your most invisible and pan-suffocating protagonist "Fear" itself. The B/W enhances the internal battle of the light and dark at the core of our being, and highlights the chiaroscuro that itself feels like a character...the embodiment of a suffocating fear, paranoia... The voice-overs of he who "conducts" the experimental observation...another race...an "outsider" of sorts(?) is a haunting character that forever presides through lateral time...a fascinating layer of consciousness that informs as he intrigues, questions rhetorically in an organic manner...and very subtly challenges your own thought processes. Its sound design induces an otherworldly seduction which identifies what is blind to us through the relativity of our sensory lexicon and cognizant process. Some perceive our cognizant process as a "controlled hallucination"...which is beautifully given reference to (through the DP work) when the "focus"/ understanding/ perception ..."blurs"...and what that may say about Fear itself as an agent in our lives...and what it does. Perhaps the "blur" is the clarity somehow...?
PHOBOS is a riveting exploration into 'Fear' as an evolutionary character within ourselves...within our DNA and its memory, being simultaneously a driving and regressive force, a life-carving and altering 'gravitational push and pull' within our internal cosmos. It's a cinematic awakening into how Fear proves to be both the Hope and Peril of our being. Following on the auteur director's signature, mind-blowing style, PHOBOS explores the hijacking of our cognizance and induced fear through mass culture and its diverse portals. The iconography is seductive as it is powerfully evocative: including iconic, cultural references 'Saturn Devouring His Son', 'Guernica' and Munch's 'The Scream' - to mention a few - in that visual slipstream of cutaway referentials that galvanize an arresting narrative design, hinting at how dots connect and weave a consciousness that induces "the prison of Fear". Even more haunting are the cuts in the end as she's walking... It makes us sense her fear...that she in fact fears the possibility/ies of her own quantum potential... Indeed the greatest fear is the fear within ourselves...the fear most relative to us...and no external "monster" could ever top that... The only thing to fear in the (in)human condition...is well...'Fear' itself. Alex Proyas weaves a narrative design through the marriage of image and sound, pace, settings, costume and makeup designs...in a spellbinding, seductive, haunting...and ultimately interrogative manner! Fear is the greatest ally the master puppeteer has to execute mass subjugation;...whoever owns the "arena"...owns the masses (ref: GLADIATOR)...