湿地

　　又是一年足球赛季，成绩不甚良好的巴黎队即将前往卡布隆吉与当地球队进行对抗。巴黎队球星山姆·罗瑞特（奥尔本·勒努瓦 Alban Lenoir 饰）出生于卡布隆吉，他最近表现不太出色，因此备受媒体奚落。与此同时，众多球迷相继云集到球场，准备欣赏一场精彩的赛事。杰诺特（Sebastien Vandenberghe 饰）饰卡布隆吉的一名球员，他似乎和山姆有着不可化解的仇恨，因此不惜借助未知药物的帮忙。谁想到注射药物过后，杰诺特突然暴走，俨然变成了嗜血如命的僵尸，只是这一变故还没有什么人察觉。　　漫长的旅途过后，巴黎队抵达驻地，山姆被当做叛徒遭到家乡人的谩骂。此时没有人知道，即将到来的比赛中将会发生什么可怕的事件……

　　A group of young men dare a classmate to reach the porch of a legendary old house, said to be haunted by the thirteen victims of a family massacre. In hopes of making a viral video they arm him with a video camera to prove he was there or to capture him fleeing in terror before even reaching the house, as others have. When he doesn't return, the guys must go in to get him. Inside they discover the truth about the house, the fate of their friend and their own fate as well.

　　The main character is Dr. Max Holst, a successful neurosurgeon. One day an intense little man named Steinmetz shows up, who has the real ability to create objects out of thin air, using only his mind. As no one believes him at first, he is held at a ward for mental patients, but manifests the key to his door and escapes. As he has a special interest in Dr. Holst, Steinmetz subsequently invites Holst to his large mansion, which is full of expensive paintings and sculptures, and proves to him that he can in fact materialise objects. Steinmetz’s abilities are evolving by leaps and bounds, and is progressing from being able to create objects only to being able to create living things. His ultimate ambition is to be able to create a human being. He tells Dr. Holst that if he will only perform a certain brain operation on him, Steinmetz will become able to attain his goal. He’s got all the necessary equipment set up in his basement. Dr. Holst, however, is too spooked by the whole thing to agree to this mad scheme, and refuses. Steinmetz then sets about manipulating Holst’s life, to pressure him into performing the operation. By then Steinmetz has become able to create a temporary human being, and in the hope that he can perhaps make his own creation perform the operation, he manifests a doppelganger of Dr. Holst. This double proceeds to take over Dr. Holst’s life, creating chaos for him professionally and personally. And then Dr. Holst starts fighting back. The ending has the dual virtue of being both unexpected and satisfying.

　　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.