Gaia Reviews

Part eco-horror, part body horror, part surrealist mindfuck, and all Lovecraftian nightmare, Gaia is an intense atmospheric offering from South Africa that proves you can offer terror on a cosmic scale without a Hollywood budget.

The film follows a park ranger who stumbles across a father and son duo of survivalists with an unsettlingly slavish devotion to nature. The lines between normalcy and something far more ominous become immediately blurred and it soon is evident to our hapless protagonist that the men's motives are far from those of civilized people. Both her body and mind begin to succumb to the will of something darker...something older...something with a plan.

Gaia begins with a foreboding shot of the grandeur of the wilderness that serves as a harbinger of things to come. Indeed, the creeping omnipresence of something bigger (and, worse, darker) lies behind the veneer of nature only amplifies as the film moves along. At times ambiguous, but always ambitious, Gaia drip feeds you information until you, like the main character, come to the realization that you're trapped in the inevitable. This is the essence of cosmic horror.

Cosmic horror, the idea of our comparative insignificance to something so vast, ageless, and unknowable, is a difficult concept to communicate onscreen but recent entries into the genre have shown that delving into the more intangible aspects of this dread of greater powers can indeed be realized. Most of these entries have found a balance between what need be spoken and what can be suggested with sheer visuals. Gaia is one such entry.

Early on, we are introduced to the undeniable fact that the world the survivalists believe in is, at the very least, partially rooted in reality. They worship "her", a vast system of ancient fungi rooted in the depths of the earth since time immemorial, since long before humans trod the earth. To say the the film never lets up on making their faith an increasingly undeniable concrete fact is an understatement. In fact, the human threat is promptly dispelled and a progressive unease sets in, not long after which we realize that the humans are but tools in a grander scheme that has been millions of years in the working.

This is not a movie reliant on a masked stalker or bloodshed to elicit fear. No, this is a story that taps into something primal to wrench hope from your mind. There is no demon or supernatural entity to run from, there is only the zealous ravening of insane devotees and the subsequent understanding that they might not be insane at all.

Gaia is also not traditionally built, as far as genre films go. What begins as a tropey endeavor off the beaten path (aka, random person goes down a road they know they shouldn't) quickly becomes an entirely different experience. There is even a line that winks at the audience as if telling us "hang on, we know this might seem familiar but it's not" and, boy howdy, are they not kidding. The bulk of the running time you are basically in the shoes of the protagonist, scraping together clues and, eventually, trying to cling onto hope.

If the idea of a witness to something unspeakable doesn't speak Lovecraftian to you then maybe the following will: Cults, ancient beings that men can only comprehend if they refer to them as gods, fatalist dread, and fungi. All these abound in the flick. Gaia is the movie H.P. Lovecraft would of made if he were our contemporary. And, really, that is all the high praise this needs.

Gaia is not for everyone. At times it is vague but only in a way that increases a desire to know it all (it practically begs to be rewatched right after you watched it the first time). At other times it is luridly clear and all the more terrifying for it. There are moments that are surreal and others that parallel the madness of biblical prophets. Mostly though, it is a movie dripping with an undercurrent of unrelenting dread. For those who know and love Lovecraft, this will be a treat. For those that don't, it can serve as an alluring introduction.

I give Gaia 9/10. Highly recommended.