All the Gods from the Sky

It is not a comfortable horror. Basic, because it has not a real plot . Only, few plots for choose the most closed to you. A brother, his sister, an accident in childhood , the isolation and a life who seems be slice of dream. And the radical change. It can be perceived as a parable or just part , with few dark poetic inovations, of near reality. The verdict is yourself. And, maybe, this liberty of interpretation is the basic motif to see it as a different horror or Svci. Fi. , or thriller escaping from the limits of genres and becoming a sort of challenge.

The restrained story centers on Simon (Jean-Luc Couchard), a factory worker who lives in an isolated farm with his severely disfigured bedridden sister Estelle far away from the society. He cares for his sister while preparing for the awaited arrival of mysterious "those up there" who just might be the siblings' salvation. Simon is plagued with guilt and depression and keeps the secret hope deep in his flesh of saving his sister by freeing her from earthly gravity. He will soon discover that this is not what it seems to be and conceals a dark and macabre truth. Visually the film is one of the most stunning in recent memory, we are seized from these first moments by its aesthetic which evokes the scenes close to that of David Lynch films, the cinematography of Antoine Carpentier is simply sublime. The idea of insidious contamination of body and mind is at the heart of the film. The director plays with the expectations and the psychology of the spectator, primal fears, fear of disease, madness (and also ET creatures in the process) and the atmosphere is carried by a shadowy external photography and a powerful cinematography whose use of lights transforms the vastness of the setup into a sum of little closed places, conveying the disturbing feeling of a suffocating paranoia. Quarxx operates a delicate stylistic transition, in our eyes successful, more flamboyant summoning the spirit of the films of the Lynch or a Cronenberg. If New French Extremity techniques between Cronenberg and Lovecraft to raise the tension, helped by an anxious sound-design he also knows how to turn this "old-school" approach against the spectator with shock scenes whose impact comes from the fact that the camera does not don't turn away.

I mentioned in the early paragraph the atmosphere of the film and, no pun intended, it's indeed the key element that drives the film. The atmosphere is so intense that we don't need to be scared, because we constantly keep our guard up, it's the kind of situations so calm we know something will happen. If you like horror films to be clear and unambiguous, you won't have much fun here, as " All the Gods in the Sky " reveals a different result to almost every viewer. This French gem fits many genres into one film, and it pays off in the end.

This is a dark, unflinching look at guilt and abuse. The trauma of a childhood accident has pushed Simon, now in his early 30s, to the edge of madness. Caring for his sister who carries the physical scars, he is almost equally debilitated by the psychological toll it has taken on him. His grasp on reality becoming more tenuous, is what he is experiencing a genuine escape or just the last vestiges of sanity slipping away ? It is a gruelling watch, with a mixture of body horror, violence and an underlying tradegy at a loss of childhood inocenents. Sometimes muddled with too many story themes it still maintains a dark fascination to the very end.

As singular as his director Quarxx. Between a flashback of the past and the prediction of a foretold drama? The life of a man in which, as the social worker says, "there's nothing to steal here!". Who'd want his life? And then that lunar face of Estelle (Melanie Gaydos) who shares with her brother a possible deliverance to come. She in the silence of a few tears and him with this cold anger against him, the others who judge or pretend to want to help and against this sky that is waiting for us? A UFO.

I'm not sure I could spoil the movie. Well not within a certain limit of characters that is. Don't worry though I'm not going to say anything that will spoil the movie for you. This really digs in deep and handles childhood trauma and other things in a very mad way.

There might not be much that makes sense to most watching this and there are some silver linings, but you really have to pay attention to things happening and not happening - no pun intended. This really is quite crazy, are you up for it?