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| Renee (Noomi Rapace) is an object of study in Rupture--Steven Shainberg (2016) |
What is the deal with Noomi Rapace and alien babies? Really? Oops, sorry, this post is full of spiders. I mean, spoilers. Well, I'll try not to give too much away at the beginning, and leave the major spoilers toward the end. For my first screening at the 2016 Fantasia Film Festival, the crowd was raucous and excited. It took a little while to get into the hall because Fantasia was busy giving Guillermo Del Toro a lifetime achievement award, so the wait was for a worthwhile cause. Mitch Davis, without whom this festival could not exist, gave Steven Shainberg a rousing introduction--and Shainberg promptly fell in love with Mitch...as one is wont to do. Each and every time Mitch introduces a film, you can just feel the cinephilia vibrating off of him. He is a man who LOVES films.
So the film's opening is borderline boring as we are introduced to our main players. Single mom Renee Marie Morgan (Noomi Rapace) is doing her morning routine when she encounters a spider on her bathroom sink and promptly freaks out. Hyperventilating, hysteria, the works. Her teenage son, Evan (Percy Hynes White) quickly takes care of the little critter, and all returns to normal in their banal suburban lives in Kansas City, MO. Some exposition that will come in handy later: Evan has a hard time with homework, especially Math; Renee's ex-husband is kind of a dick, and Evan's spending the weekend with him; Renee is both fond of and handy with an exacto blade; Renee is going to go skydiving that day, and Evan hopes she doesn't die. Things start to get weird when Michael Chiklis puts some kind of device on Renee's tire, and starts following her around. When Renee's tire (not accidentally) blows, Chiklis and some other really bland thugs wrap her head in duct tape, taser her, and abduct her right off the road, wisely taking her car with them. No fu**ing trace.
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| Intrepid Renee is a bad-ass action hero |
The majority of the film follows Renee as she attempts to discover who these people are and why they've brought her to this strangely low-tech medical facility. She has smuggled her handy exacto blade into her boot, and thankfully they let her keep them on so that she can execute her escape. She crawls through the tunnels like a voyeur's Disneyland, peeking into the rooms housing other subjects. She eavesdrops on quite a few conversations and torture demonstrations as the film unfolds, so while the pacing of the film is a little slow to start, things pick up quickly. Renee, as played by Rapace, is a fierce mama bear who will do anything to survive, if only to return to her beloved teenage son--and that's my problem (surprise, surprise). Why can't she be strong, industrious, and resourceful in her own right rather than her abilities having to be channeled through her maternal drive. Jennifer Aniston just wrote an
op-ed in the Huffington Post about how she's NOT pregnant, and she doesn't need to be a mother (or married) to be complete. Well, that's not the way cinema sees femininity, and this film unfortunately buys into many of those tired tropes. At least there's no sex in it (no Yummy Mummy) if you don't count all the face rubbing going on.
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| Renee sits with Blake (Jonathan Potts) as he undergoes his final test |
Back to the positives.
Rupture is both gorgeous and quite unsettling--both of those qualities are actually intrinsic to the way that the narrative plays out. Karim Hussain's marvelous cinematography bathes the film in a sea of red, yellow, pink, and orange, and these colors add a level of surreal intensity to an otherwise rather grimy facility. The denizens of this facility also have enhanced sensory perception; sight, smell, and touch are hyperbolized within this film's dynamic mise-en-scene. And speaking of significant props,
Rupture is at its best when it plays upon some of the most common moviegoer fears--especially of spiders and snakes. If you are at all afraid of these creepy crawlies, then this film may be very hard to take. Granted, both creatures are manipulated with CGI to full effect, but the way that these fears are presented onscreen is truly masterful. The cringe factor for this film is cranked to eleven. Likewise, if you do not like visiting practitioners of various pointy medical instruments, there's quite a bit of jabbing, probing, and injecting too.
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| The poster makes Rupture look misleadingly like a sex movie |
While
Rupture nods to several well known sci-fi/dystopia films (
1984,
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, even a dash of
The Shining), it has enough originality to keep you guessing--even though at times it comes across as a lost episode of the TV show
Fringe with a little
Orphan Black thrown in there. When the big reveal finally occurs, the film actually encourages a rewatch, as earlier plot points and cryptic lines of dialogue become much more fraught with meaning. Noomi Rapace plays more or less how you would expect her to--strong, capable, curious and perceptive--yet at the same time, a little hollow. This level of emotional vacancy actually works within the confines of the film's narrative, and her supporting actors (played by some well-knowns such as Michael Chiklis, Peter Stormare, and Ari Millen) also carry their deliberate blankness well. Kerry Bishee totally steals the film, though, as Dianne. Her cool, alien demeanor occasionally allows for little bursts of empathy, yet she, like the others, is duly dedicated to their noble cause.
What might their noble cause be? ***Here I'm spoiling just a little. These noble scientists are interested in the next step in human evolution, it has something to do with "rupturing" human DNA, and...alien babies. Or maybe genetically mutated babies might be more accurate, and Renee is going to be Mommy! Sheesh, she just escaped Ridley Scott's
Prometheus, and here's another band of outsiders eager for her to breed a new race. While I'm not going to spoil the ending, suffice to say that the choices that Shainberg makes will probably not surprise you and maintain the feminine status quo.
Rupture is definitely worth a look, especially for its sumptuous visuals and unsettling narrative. I just wish it was more ideologically subversive.
