Aaaaaaaah!

I was lucky to get the chance to see this at the Cameo in Edinburgh on 9-Oct 2015, followed by a Q&A with Steve Oram. Steve reckons he saw a film/documentary about apes where one tribe attacked another - the males of one tribe killed all the males and youngsters of the other, raped the females then sat in the trees looking highly satisfied with themselves. Aaaaaaaah ! is a kind of adaptation of this story with the apes replaced by humans. Toyah is brilliant, Noel Fielding makes a short but entertaining cameo and the soundtrack, original tracks by Robert Fripp, is immense. Looking forward to seeing the Director's Cut with the extra blancmange.

I love films that are seriously different. This film is exactly that. Why?… Almost all film and TV drama portrays its' characters behaving as humans do, one way or the other, in all sorts of scenarios. Even animation (Shreck, Monster inc) and animal (eg "talking dog genre", Babe, Nemo etc) movies depict the characters behaving in ways consistent with modern humans. You as watcher can easily relate to the characters… even if in violent or extreme scenarios.

Not so Aaaaaaaah !.

In this exceptional film the writer and director have made an attempt to change the depiction of personal, social and sexual behavior to fit a conjecture that humans could have carried full blown ape behavior and mores with them all the way from the jungle to modern post-industrial society.

On that level the film is riveting and a challenge to the cast of professional actors who did pretty well with it. However, on a serious downside…. I found myself constantly battling with an endless need to suspend and re-suspend disbelief. It was really difficult to have an immersive experience with the film. You may argue it is not necessarily a bad thing to be forced to cerebrally multitask…. but Fantasy and/or Sci-fi works well if it is consistent within itself. Suspension of disbelief is best achieved as a brief hypnotic act and you are in. This film constantly bothered me with its inconsistencies. Examples.. it places non-verbal grunting apes as the equals of our modern humans with exact achievements in science, architecture, technology and so on. Clearly absurd. Intellectual achievement require an extraordinarily complex language structure. All things need to be named and defined. Language is an essential prerequisite for thought. Grunting apes cannot achieve the results. A flat panel TV and iPad have advanced physics behind their creation. You can't grunt your way to an iPad. Also.. the human/apes in this film behaved in ways which were messy/anarchistic/destructive in the extreme. So why were they clothed in such immaculate clothing, and why was the film set in such an over-clean, over-ordered environment where absolutely nothing was out of place. The physical structure of the city environment, street cleanliness and manicure park lands shouted "INCONSISTENCY". And where were the forces of control (police etc) which would need to be present and dominant in a society with such rampantly anarchistic behavior.

And furthermore… there were absurd, unnecessary .. school-boy-humour jokes injected into the film (eg a store manager masturbating all over a framed photo of Prince Harry) with no reason plot-wise .. doing nothing but challenging the integrity of the film.

I think many viewers will abandon the film as "this is too silly". However, for me it was a fascinating and rewarding experience. Recommend it?.. sure do.

This film is so repulsive and annoying at the same time that at some point all of this only mixes into one exhausting noise and you can hardly tell what is even going on. This makes it impossible to follow the "arc of suspense" (if you can call it that), so that at a certain point every further scene disappears in complete irrelevance. All I can remember about this film is the never-ending screaming. Thanks for that.

An excellent portrayal of the inner human. Of course it doesn't make sense, it's surrealism. Not enough film makers are bold enough to make stuff this loose. If you get David Lynch, you'll probably get this. I would have liked the actors to make a bit more effort with the grunting. Often, it was too close to words (Toyah was particularly bad). The music is stunning. Very Fripp. Lovely little cameo from the instantly recognisable Alice Lowe.

A look at the modern world but with one alteration: people are essentially neanderthals or cavemen in their development and only communicate through grunts and signs.

A very interesting premise, which is why I watched the movie. However, from the first minute the movie doesn't offer anything beyond novelty value. The plot is pretty random and pointless and seems set up mostly to shock the audience. Many scenes which, while aiming to shock, made me just roll my eyes.

Even the main idea - people behaving like they're in the Stone Age - doesn't work well. The people involved live in modern home with modern technology, yet eat with their hands and don't appear to have any degree of intelligence. The concept was not grafted seamlessly into modern life at all.

End result is an absolute mess. Even worse, it's a pretentious mess. One of the worst movies I've ever seen (and I've seen over 5,000 movies).