david-baril

Being a huge fan of Pontypool and the very bizarre and completely unexpected idea it brought to the concept of zombies, I went into Ejecta expecting the unexpected. Sadly, when the movie ended nothing of the sort had happened but I did get the feeling it tried. The scenario is a weird mix of threadbare tropes and some nonsensical elements with very little connections or consequences between them. The special effects are not as good as some TV shows.

One of the first thing we see is this testimonial from William, the main character of the story, about how aliens somehow came in his head and left something there, something that fills his sleep wit dreadful stuff that is beyond description. The delivery of the interview scenes are as chilling as it gets, but you can only speak of indescribable horror for so long before it starts being just vague. The fake documentary angle works though, and the delicate balance between the interviewer being impressed, skeptical, and a bit scared is well played.

Then the opening credits roll, showing every mythical alien photo we ever saw. It is fitting, because most everything about the alien's appearance, behaviour and obscure motivations does not stray an inch from the established alien lore.

So the titular solar ejecta happens, which somehow makes an alien ship fail and crash on earth... in the woods behind William's house. There is an ellipse, Soldiers are there. William gets shot. William gets captured and interrogated in a bunker. And this is where the situation gets from tense to grotesque, as he is being questioned and tortured by a women that people call "doctor" who is also single-handedly ordering the soldiers, when she's not shooting them in the head to ascertain her authority. I actually enjoyed the way she played fake-friendly and enthusiasm that switches instantly into dark sadistic glee, but I found the amount of multi-tasking a bit unnatural.

See, Dr. Tobin also found the footage of the incident (which has somehow been neatly edited with music in-camera) and is watching it for clues and learning about its content in real time, at the same time the audience is. The tape mostly contains very long chase sequences in the wood and the house. The alien's beastly behaviour and casual nakedness is never adequately explained, they just chase and bully the hero around, staying out of frame and out of light at all times, emitting a wide variety of growls, wails and that fashionable staccato growl every scary creature and movie trailer started making a few years ago.

Meanwhile, in the torture bunker, mysterious gadgets are used and misused with inconclusive results, there is much shouting and unpleasantness. Some weird things do happen at the end, but never really build up to a reveal or help in any way to explain the goal of the alien's actions. In the end there is no mystery, there is just the unexplained.

This movie did deliver in droves when it comes to the actual Owlman. Excellent costume, tremendous voice. Too bad they spoiled it by showing it too often, for too long, and not always in the most convincing angle. The editing style is jarring. Recurring flashbacks of repeating artsy close-ups punctuate every scene. They don't bring much of interest to the themes of the film, and some, like the random doorknob, are just plain confusing. Those high-contrast, blurry and well lit random flashes are violently clashing with the dialogues, which feel video-like, low contrast, poorly lit and very static. The chase and mental torture scenes that occur later in the film are so drawn out that any sense of tension is cancelled. There are quite a few very awkward takes that really should have been cut because they make the tone uneven, slow the action, and dilute the sense of danger. Maybe this movie is a re-edit away from being good, but in its current state it is not much more than a slightly interesting mess.

I like the premise and the naturalistic feel of this horror tale in mundane settings. There is a few good jump scares and some tension, the acting is uneven but mostly unoffensive, and on a superficial level it kind of works. That being said, every minute of that movie suffers from one or more of these flaws that gives it the feel of an amateur film: THE STORY is rife with loose ends. Some key points, like why the mother is hiring a stranger to actually monitor a baby monitor, the tantalizing rule of not going downstairs for a vaguely menacing reason, the not completely locking up the infected father, the allusion to the (never mentioned again or resolved in any way) demise of the previous sitter... It all only serves to move the plot in the desired direction but none of it makes much sense. THE Rhythm: the introduction takes forever to expose the simple situation of the protagonists and you could easily trim a good 20 minutes of retelling and unnecessary shots. I'm all for a deliberate slow pace, but the first driving sequence is a textbook example of how not to do it: repetitive and uninvolving. THE SPECIAL EFFECTS themselves vary from serviceable (the make-up and red eye effects) to dirt cheap: The CGI blood spurts and even the tracked-on head wound are stock footage I see (and sometimes use myself) in zero budget short films. All the tension of THE ENDING is undermined not only by the flash forward we see at the beginning that makes guessing the coming events very easy, but also by the introduction of a policeman character that belongs in a funnier movie where shooting an aggressive kid in the back without warning is normal, and ironic cop mustaches are still in.

The original Looney Tunes had a whole set of recognizable elements that made them work. Physical comedy, action, a sweet soundtrack that underlined every move. The setting changed from one short sketch to the other, moving across the world and time periods.

It could be argued that they already threaded this path, that a change was needed to keep it fresh. Sure, why not.

But please, anything but a sitcom setting! The jokes, mostly contained in the dialogue, fall flat and the situations are all from the bag of rotting sitcom tropes. That is neither new or fresh by any standard. That is the most overused formula on TV, and it makes everything predictable and dull.