Elena (Eva Bourne) is kept deep underground in some sort of facility. Barry Nyle (Michael Rogers) will question her each day, trying for some sort of response he only sometimes gets. Elena has abilities. Telepathy, for one. She seems able to change TV channels with her mind. She makes a nurse's eyes explode at one point.
Elena would like to leave, and it seems like something in the facility wants to help. I think it's the glowy pyramid located somewhere in the facility, though the whys and wherefores escape me. The person who founded the place, some "utopia through mind-altering drugs" guy, now a debilitated wreck, thinks of Elena as the future, but doesn't have any clue what's actually happening with her.
The movie is set in 1983, and writer/director Panos Cosmatos definitely tries to capture a late-70s/early-80s aesthetic. Barry's car, the fashions, his mother (I think) watching Reagan on a news program, the computers. The lighting in the facility is often an overwhelming artificial red that reminds me of the room in 2001 that houses HAL's computer brain (or maybe it's the same color as the red dot that was his "eye".) The halls are endless, identical right angles of blank, shiny plastic, but the elevators have that fake wood laminate crap on the walls. The musical score is heavy on synthpop and deep bass notes, the latter especially around Barry. There are security, things ("Sentionauts") that look like a bootleg Daft Punk in the helmet, but the odd look of their outfits evoke the proper era.
A lot of the movie, especially when it's focused on Elena, is given a sort of dreamlike quality. She always moves at a slow shuffle. The film often uses an after-image effect, like there's a ghost of her, trailing her, or in some cases preceding her. She barely speaks, or even makes any sounds. Even when some hideous, straitjacketed thing is trying to gnaw her ankles, she just drags herself away at a snail's pace.
Rogers plays Nyle with this barely contained resentment. Everything he says carries an edge. His mother tells him there's some dinner in the fridge, he can't even bother to look at her when he says, "Oh, that's nice." His speaking at Elena (can't call them conversations) always carry double meanings and threats. The first time we see them interact, when she won't respond, he starts tapping his pen against his clipboard, louder and faster until she gives him a reaction. Then he stops.
There's one flashback, to 1966, which shows what happened to him. Basically, he took something and either met a god on the other side, or became convinced he did. Outside the shots of whirling clouds and a statue of a man that seems to shift medium over time, he crawls from a perfect black circle in a white void, now covered in tar or oil and confronts Elena's mother, as white as the room. I took it that he killed her in a fucked-up mental state (and his black stains her, and her white stains his fingers), but Elena was either already born or they were able to save her.
But then there's the very end, which I'm going to spoil, so if you want to avoid it, watch the movie first, then come back. I'll wait to start in the next paragraph.
Barry's lost it, out of either impatience with Elena or frustration that he's not been recognized as the special one. He doffs his Carl Sagan wig and special contacts, throws on some Noriega puffy leather onesie and goes to kill Elena. Who has escaped, but he had her implanted with a tracker so he follows along. He kills a couple of stoners sitting around a campfire, and finally finds Elena. She won't approach him, so he tries to go to her.
Except his feet are tangled in the underbrush, he trips and smashes his head on a rock. And he's dead. *sad trombone*
I admit, I wondered how the confrontation would play out, since Elena didn't seem to react quickly to anything, but she doesn't do anything here. No indication she manipulated the plants or encouraged their growth. I thought maybe he'd hurt her, or she'd get frightened enough to react like she did when the nurse stole the photo of Elena's parents, but no. Barry's just a clumsy, stupid lunatic.
Which is maybe the point. Whatever ideals the founder had, it was all a bunch of bullshit. They took drugs and Elena's mother died, and Barry's fucked in the head, yet left in charge of the place. The founder is a dying old man who lies in a bed watching documentaries about resorts in Hawaii. The girl he thought was going to save humanity's soul spent her life trapped in a featureless cube, at Barry's mercy (and I can't tell if Barry is jealous of Elena, or he transferred his lust from her mother to her. Probably both.) Elena can barely talk, or function, or do anything. The last we see of her, she's approaching the one home in a suburb of identical houses where a TV's glow can be perceived through the windows.
Weird movie. Visually striking, but weird. And I really don't know how I feel about that ending.
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