二階堂あい – Ai もう一度あいたくて…

　　阿坤（卡文英玛诺泰 饰）是个孤儿，由村里强大的萨满莱穆养大。他受雇驱魔，却偷偷进行黑魔法仪式，想提炼尸油赚钱迎娶心爱的女孩苏伊，没想到这触怒了鬼魂、招致报复。此时苏伊恰巧来找他，究竟阿坤能否以所学和信仰帮助自己和身边的人死里逃生？

　　由克里斯（Titus De Voogdt 饰）和皮特（Stef Aerts 饰）带队并由数名十几岁的男孩组成的童子军即将前往靠近法国边境的某座森林里露营，出发前他向孩子们讲述了一个可怕的传说，据说森林里有一种被称为“凯”的半人半兽怪物肆虐横行，当地人闻风丧胆。它的模样如同人狼，凡是被它咬过的人都会受到感染变成人狼。孩子们群情激昂，决心痛揍人狼，随后跟随克里斯坐上卡车出发。阳光明媚的时节，孩子们在露营地快乐玩耍，不过并不受众人待见的小男孩萨姆（Maurice Luijten 饰）似乎格外在意“凯”的存在，他在挖洞时声称一度看到“凯”的身影，随后更在营地附近发现一处神秘的巢穴。　　夜幕降临，可怕的身影悄悄向营地接近，萨姆的命运发生彻底改变……

　　Attempting to surpass his father's legacy, a reclusive neuroscientist becomes entangled in his own experiment, pitting ten fragments of his consciousness against each other.

　　Set in an underground dungeon inhabited by bundled, ragged human beings, after the nuclear holocaust. The story follows the wanderings of a hero through the situations of survival. People wait for the Ark to arrive and rescue them while their habitat falls apart.　　Delving deep into the dusty and long abandonded vaults of b-cinema in search of lost gems always leaves me with a bittersweet taste. On one hand the discovery of unexpected gems where no one would think them possible is a rewarding experience. On the other hand though it makes one wonder how many of these remarkable low-budget oddities, personal love affairs of directors never quite famous and now all but forgotten, have almost forever slipped from memory?　　n any case what we have here is a little post-apocalyptic gem from Poland that is really better than it has any right to. The dystopian near future of O-BI, O-BA finds a group of survivors of the nuclear war that ravaged the Earth inhabiting an underworld concrete bunker and biding their time as they wait for the mysterious Ark, an air ship of some kind that will come and save them. The Ark proves to be an elaborate hoax, carefully designed to give hope to the malnourished and desperate denizens of the bunker, while in the meantime the dome that separates their miserable existence from the nuclear winter outside is slowly caving in.　　What first striked me about the movie is the design of the bunker and the depiction of the survivors. The survivors are gaunt, filthy and terrible-looking penitents, dressed in rags and aimlessly wandering the neon-lit halls of the bunker like automatons. The bunker is a rundown, seedy place, with bright neon lights peering from all sides like the eyes of malignant beasts.　　On one hand it is a slightly 80's depiction of the dystopian future but the movie never stoops down to MAD MAX cheese. Instead it combines biting political satire with the bleak outlook of a world with no future, black comedy with barbs on apathy, religion and power. The survivors, for example, are fed some kind of flour dropping from a tube that hovers in the air - later on we discover the food supervisor uses books and the Bible itself as filler for this meagre meal. There are many such short symbolic touches, perhaps not life-changing or faith-restoring, yet playful, clever and inspired.　　One thing is for sure; O-BI, O-BA is not your run-of-the-mill sci-fi schlock. It overcomes its modest budget with creativity and has genuine artistic aspirations both from a writing and directing perspective. My opinion is that it should have been filmed in black and white instead of colour though. The director uses atmospheric light and shadow to great effect and it would have registered even better in stark black and white. The blue-green neon on the other hand outstays its welcome after a while. Just a minor gripe in an otherwise solid b-movie with its heart set in all the right places.　　Imagine a less bleak THE ROAD (Cormac McCarthy) being injected with the satire and humour of DR.STRANGELOVE and you're getting there. See it if you can find it.