![]() ![]() Alongside the woman’s body is a digicam full of family videos. The likeness of all three is also on a family photo that John has in his wallet. For he stages a deceptive scenario that leads us by the nose right to where he wants us, while simultaneously disinterring the contradictory nature of our own voyeuristic desires in even watching a film like this.Ī key scene: in a holiday cabin, John finds the bloody corpse of a pregnant woman (Hannah Al Rashid), already the mother to two teenagers. The question of who is leaving these breadcrumbs in John’s dark forest of fear and confusion may – at least until the satisfying final reveal – remain a mystery, but of course Anwar himself is the ultimate manipulator. Newly resurfaced from his rabbit hole, John is like Alice in Wonderland, and the notes, videos, alarm clocks and caches that he finds scattered about the place are like so many bottles marked “Drink me” and cakes labelled “Eat me”, mocking and manipulating our hero into strange and new perspectives on his circumstances. As our forgetful protagonist – and we along with him – race to work out whether he is hero or villain, victim, perpetrator or mere witness, of unspeakable crimes committed against a vacationing family, the narrative landscape is peppered with signposts all too recognisable from the slasher, the survival thriller and The Most Dangerous Game, but mapped out in a disorienting manner that makes it all too easy to lose one’s bearings. The fourth feature from Indonesian writer/director Joko Anwar, Ritual strives repeatedly to squeeze new thrills from hoary genre cliches – the cabin in the woods, the machete-wielding killer, the (wo)mantraps and massacres, the cat-and-mouse and slash-and-dash – by constructing for itself a singular and devious narrative perspective. John, you see, has no idea how he came to be buried in this forest, or even who he is, as one trope (zombies) gives way to another (amnesiac agent). It is a trope recognisable from any number of zombie movies – although the man, far from being undead, will turn out to be John Evans (Rio Dewanto), even if he knows this only from the ID in his wallet. Watch, Kilmer, and learn.Despite the birdsong and insect chirps amplified into a heady, almost hallucinatory soundscape, Ritual opens with a sylvan idyll marked mostly by tranquility – until, that is, this natural Eden is disrupted by the sudden emergence of a human hand from the earth, as a man frantically digs himself out of a shallow grave. Ditching theoretical ponderings for the good old mechanics of amnesia, Kaufman gets our big gold star for making most of the movie's action take place inside Carrey's brain while his memory is rubbed out. The supreme chutzpah of Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind has attracted no less than Jim Carrey to the lead. If you really, really fancy a deep exploration of the mind-bending effects of memory loss go for the surreal side of life big time like the new script from Being John Malkovich writer Charlie Kaufman. Here's a wee touch of advice for Mr Kilmer, however. ![]() The story follows that now familiar fella, an amnesiac, who tries to warn a small-town sheriff about an assassination plot against the American president. Ever quick off the mark, Val Kilmer has spotted the bandwagon departing quickly into the sunset and duly scrambled on by his fingernails with new film Blind Horizon. Not only do we have Nicolas Cage being resurrected complete with inconvenient blank in his memory in the upcoming Back Up, but only yesterday did John Woo throw his twopenny's worth into the forgetful frenzy with the Philip K. What is it about memory loss these days? One little film called Memento and everyone wants their very own dysfunctional brain cell or two to make them feel they belong. ![]()
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