Wednesday 4 November 2009

Roots Search: Film Review

Title: Roots Search: Shokushin Buttai X
Writer: Michiru Shimada
Director: Hisashi Sugai
Year: 1986

Since the beginning of this review blog, I have seen a fair amount of anime, and the quantity I saw beforehand is greater still. In all this time, there aren’t many releases, be they series, film, OVA, manga or live action, that I would dismiss as being of no value whatsoever. There is a large amount of throwaway ecchi rubbish, but if a shows aim is to be throwaway ecchi rubbish, actually slamming it for being so seems redundant, as they are easily avoidable. What we have with Roots Search, however, is a 45 minute release which has pretentions of an intelligent philosophical debate, but fails to live up to any of what we could generously describe as its ‘promise’.

Before I explain why I think the film is a resounding brainsore, I will qualify my criticisms by acceding that 45 minutes is perhaps too short a time to have really gone into the ideas Roots Search proposes in a more challenging way, but I feel the film also fails to compromise successfully and instead makes a hash of everything.

I am no expert when it comes to sci-fi horror, but if horror scenes appear clunky and not at all frightening to someone who isn’t a horror enthusiast, then they are hardly fit for purpose. Bearing in mind that this film is over 20 years old, it is possible that these scenes would’ve appeared less obvious to an audience not used to the epic CGstravaganzas that abound today. Still, the premise isn’t, and wasn’t, a new one, and while I’m sure Roots Search was dismissed by some as an Alien rip-off, it seems a bit unfair that one film should have monopoly on the idea of ‘horror in space’. Roots Search is ‘horror in space’, but the reason that no one can hear them scream is not due to the vacuum of space, but due to the awfulness of the production. It is almost as awful as my analogy for how awful it is.

The horror scenes revolve around the psychic alien creature locating the characters’ guilty pasts and forcing them to relive or face up to them through the use of ‘horrifying’ apparitions. Like A Christmas Carol, except in space, with a lot more blood, and significantly less Yorkshire pudding. The uninspired set up for these scenes are further let down by the spectacularly awful visuals. When I say visuals I am not referring only to the poor quality of the animation, which is more or less forgivable bearing in mind the age of the production, and also that it was likely made on a shoestring budget, something which is also suggested by the oddly short running time. I am referring to the poor ideas behind the design of these scenes; the beginning of the alien’s intervention is always announced by a screen-filling shot of the aliens face (sideways mouth aaargh!), which is then replaced with the face of an individual from the character’s past, which is replaced with the alien, which is replaced by the individual, alien, person, alien, person, eeeeeh! All of this underpinned with the synthy whooshing and whooping of an angry child assaulting a Moog. Sorry, that’s probably not how they were made. It is also conceivable that it was a Yamaha. I can’t tell whether this was passé when it first came out, but by today such a scene is to be considered excruciating cheese, and at a planning meeting a suggestion for such a scene would be met with the relocating of the tantrum-throwing Moog-child into the personal space of the gibberling who had suggested such a thing.

The film is further burdened with ugly character design, which is perhaps a harsh claim that can’t really be substantiated because it is based solely on my taste, rather than an opinion formed (hopefully) rationally. Nevertheless, ugly character design. Have it. Scott, a blonde-haired fop, is modelled on a carrot that has been inflated, and heroic Johnny-come-lately Buzz is a bastardised version of an archetypal old-school anime hero. The female lead, Moira, is tousled and clueless, plodding around with her big puppy eyes and overlong sleeves, plugging away in the ‘helpless damsel’ tradition, looking for all the world like a gender-stereotyping analyst’s wet dream.

Heteronormativity is further pandered to in a scene where, being confronted with a significant amount of gore, Moira buries her face in Scott’s overlarge manly/carrot chest, as he nobly holds her and declares “That’s too gory for a young woman to have to see”. Which to me is a strange line, as it is embedded with the assumption that there is a level of gore that a young woman should have to see, though I imagine the level is ‘not very much gore’, or possible, ‘hardly any gore at all’. A second assumption is also there through contrast, which is that the level of gore is perfectly suitable for viewing by young men. Such as carrot chested Scott and lantern-jawed Buzz.

Gore is an important commodity in Roots Search, as it is used as a substitute for horror. Japanese horror, though this is generalising slightly, is known for its understatement and horror-through-mood approach, which contrasts with the mainstream American ‘holy shit isn’t this stabby man scary?!?!’ approach, which makes Roots Search’s approach even stranger. Not scared by the monster-apparition that’s chasing a crew member? No worries, we are about to impale him with a dozen girders. Through his face. The horror.

The pacing of the piece seems rushed, which is again to be expected and is likely evidence of an epic idea squashed into too short a slot, which still doesn’t excuse some of the blunders. Early on in the piece, the alien declares: “I will kill you all within two hours”, which is an oddly time-conscious outburst from a monster, and suggests an intelligence which is absent from the horrors he decides to visit. Further dialogue sillies come roughly a quarter of an hour into the piece, as Moira suddenly changes the topic of conversation apropos of nothing to discuss the reason of human existence. This conversation needs to occur in order to set up the alien’s story, but it is a grinding shift of focus from the rest of the piece up until that point. Harsh contrasts can be an effective dramatic technique, but in this instance it comes across as half-arsed and clunky. Characters also have a tendency to say each others names too often, which is slightly annoying and needless in such a short piece. Whether this is to engender empathy from the viewer or just a consequence of poor writing is unclear, though it fails to make me sympathise with Moira, Scott, Norman, Marcus or Buzz.

There’s no epilepsy warning at the beginning of the piece, but I’d suggest there should be, as the creators of the film certainly subscribe to the idea that there is nothing quite as terrifying as viciously flashing backgrounds. Gone are the days when TV and films were allowed to literally send viewers into fits. Far be it from me to trivialise epilepsy but seizures may be the only way of disguising Roots Search’s many faults.

The film is capped off wonderfully with a dated awful synth-based thoughtless soundtrack, which is coming from someone who is an avid supporter of synth-based offerings. There are better ways of creating mood than simply thrusting both hands onto the keyboard when the monster appears suddenly on screen.

Towards the end of the film, a character is aggressively blinded, and if I were the sort of person who would make light of blindness, I would suggest that it would be preferable to having seen the film. But I won’t do that, obviously.

When the film started I thought that it would be an underground favourite with people who might watch it ironically and find brilliance in its awfulness, like finding a rich seam of gold whilst excavating the cavity of Nick Griffin’s melty eye, but alas, it is just a melty eye. I mean, a bad film. Naughty film! Rub its nose in it!

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