Don't Look Up (2009)

Inexplicable plotting and reticently clear direction makes the experience of Don’t Look Up (2009) quite frustrating and difficult, but so does much of David Lynch’s oeuvre. That said, Don’t Look Up challenges the viewer at every turn not to avoid it and move on to something else. Fruit Chan (responsible for the diabolical “Dumplings” from 3 Extremes) brings the flies and Onryu freaky eye to this film while the back story mines old folklore to produce something of an evil that is pervasively undermining the making of a gothic horror film about a Romanian gypsy (the film is being shot on location in an old theater unused for decades) who made a deal with a devil to secure the financial security with the kind of husband able to pluck her from poverty, with unspeakable results. All the devil requests is offspring from her daughter…

* / *****

A film director named Marcus (Reshad Strik) is taking medication for what look like seizures or epileptic episodes, but director Chan doesn’t make that appear to be the only method behind his mental behavior…it very well could be that Marcus is having visions and actually seeing apparitions coming to life on the set, born from agreements made long ago. There’s the sick Claire (Alyssa Sutherland), a woman in his life he cherishes and left him, dying, seemingly on her death bed. Claire’s brother, Garret (Shiloh Fernandez), is mad at him for stopping by to see her…there’s reason for this explained at the end of the film, further emphasizing Marcus’ deep psychological/emotional hang-ups. He isn’t taking his medicine lately, during the shoot, to encourage the visions as inspiration for the freaky nature of the current film. Producer Josh Petri (Henry Thomas) wants Marcus’ subject matter and tolerates his weird antics because the first film was a commercial success. The second film project was a bust, its notoriety (dealing with a house in Maine Marcus couldn’t ultimately enter during the troubled production) kept tight-lipped thanks to Josh, hoping this third film project, all the way in Bucharest near Transylvania, will recover what little rep remains for Marcus in the horror industry. Directors, according to the film, are eccentric in nature so Marcus’ behavior isn’t necessarily against the norm.

The lead actress hired for the shoot named Romy (Carmen Chaplin) seems invested in the part, a bit too invested. It seems what appears to be care for the director stems from perhaps long ago. There’s also this old guy walking about Bucharest “waiting”. What’s he waiting for? Later we see he has this bulging lesion on his neck which Marcus cuts away. Eventually the crew on set go berserk, losing their shit, and chaos ensues with Marcus a target due to the deaths that build up during the shoot…

Eli Roth makes an appearance as a Bulgarian director who vanished, as did the crew, while shooting the same folktale of Matia, the gypsy. This shoot eventually bleeds into the current production as an imprint of the old footage emerges on the new footage shot by Marcus, with Josh wanting their footage “cleaned up”. This footage seems to offer a curse on the current production, with lots of flies and the eye of a spirit haunting the location, with filmmakers being bombarded by whatever evil they contain. I think the film’s use of items on the set killing folks works better than the flies. The CGI flies just do absolutely nothing for me personally. Nothing. The eye on a screen and later seen while a Romanian crew member drags a body into a basement is pure Japanese horror cliché, not really helping this film much at all considering it deals with Romanian folklore. It just kind of seems added because this film has ties to another filmmaker’s Don’t Look Up (1996; Hideo Nakata). The light dropping on a head to shut a production assistant up, disgruntled with the outré atmosphere on set, and a camera operator dumped off a scaffold (with a matte dropped containing trees) landing hard to a wood floor are probably my two favorite scenes. They describe adequately that something’s bad wrong in the place, eventually influencing a revolt and escape from the shoot, explaining that it has all gone off the rails. Other than that I just kind of wasn’t as angered with all the confusing direction and plotting as much as just bored. I didn’t find the material challenging as much as haphazard and ill-conceived. Quite frankly, none of it worked to me. I was quite glad when the credits arrived. Just not an experience I would wish on myself again. Reshad Strik didn’t have a terribly interesting performance to me, either. His character was immediately established as off-his-rocker and there never was that chance to truly embrace him, invest in his plight because we rarely see him in a way that we can grasp his battles, feel his pain, and latch onto his dilemma. His face was tormented, and he was made up to be mentally under siege, but I could find no reason why Josh would wish to get behind him in any capacity for an overseas shoot when he should have received supervision back home instead.