• Release year: 2024
• Director: Thibault Emin.
• Producer: Damien Lagogué.
• Screenplay by: Alice Butaud, Thibault Emin, and Emma Sandona.
• Cinematography by: Léo Lefèvre.

Shotgun Commentary: dragged on existential film with an awesome premise and pitiful delivery.

Review

Else is an experimental work that explores themes like adaptation, evolution, love and trauma. It follows a couple who met quite recently and are forced to spend a quarantine together. The virus threatening their lives makes people stick to a surface and slowly become one with it.

The idea is brilliant and offers a great chance for body horror to be more than just goo and disgusting-looking patterns. That being said, as beautiful as the cinematography is, its quality isn’t matched by the script. In fact, it could be argued that the story limits what was a film with great potential.

Pushing the boundaries

Let’s start with a crucial disclaimer: if you have trypophobia or any sort of issues with patterns, do NOT watch this film. Unless, of course, you have an inherently curious, slightly masochistic nature, like yours truly. To be honest, the theme of the movie should’ve tipped you off already, but just in case, get ready for goo, sticky things, and lots of weird close-ups of what look like either body parts or the filth between the tiles of a dirty bathtub.

The use of close-ups is paired with ASMR sounds that do anything but their original task. The enhancement of sensory stimulations that you were never supposed to perceive with such intensity can be overwhelming, but mostly it is just uncomfortable and slightly nauseating. All good thus far. However, the camera decided to push the experiment even further, and the results are clear: more than five seconds of blurry images is annoying, over a minute is infuriating, damaging for your eyes and, worst of all, incredibly boring.

This attitude of punching boundaries is a common denominator in all aspects of the film. While brave storytelling is always praise-worthy, knowing when to stop is also really admirable. Sadly, the feature only achieved the first feat. In terms of pacing, storytelling and dialogues, everything is so extra your plastic glasses will melt right off. The film moves at a glacial pace. The story has the narrative equivalent of death rattles for over an hour. And the dialogues are so slow and pretentious that you don’t even get the chance to roll your eyes because you can’t remember how the sentence started.

Spoiled girls are so 2010…

One doesn’t expect to have much to say about women on a feature that basically shows textures, patterns and eyes in places where they shouldn’t be, but that’s the magic of cinema, always bringing the unexpected. It is hard to find the right words to describe how annoying and frustrating it is to see female characters who are described as “brave” turn out to be spoiled women who act erratically without any concern about who they hurt or how.

Disrespecting someone’s house is not cute, touching other people’s things without permission is not bravery, and colouring your hair a fancy colour doesn’t make you special. There, it needed to be said, and now it is. Also, there is nothing with fancy colour hair, but do all “special” female characters have to have that kind of hair? Male screenwriters seem to have decided that is a rule, and Else is not about to break it.

Same ol’ mummy issues

Speaking of clichés, the dead mother with cancer. What is that about? Firstly, if your character doesn’t need mummy issues to behave the way he does, it might be time to cut that whole thing out. Do men need to lose their mother horribly to be able to empathise with women’s feelings? One shudders to think that it might actually be the case. Is that why Trump has won the elections again? Not enough horribly dead mothers to make men understand that women are also human beings deserving of respect and human rights?

Secondly, if there’s anything that Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) has taught us, other than the fact that you can love a tree without being a tree hugger, is that there IS such thing as too many dead-mother flashbacks. You want to give your character a sad past that’s fine, one flashback is acceptable, but replaying essentially the same thing over and over is a really direct way to tell your audience that you think they are either sleeping through your film or dumb as hell. Either way, not the best way to think about your spectators…or your film if you assume they might have slept through some parts.

Complex… but not really

Sadly, the aforementioned assumption is not too far off, considering that the ideological backdrop of the feature is as dull as they come. The only part of the film more disappointing than the message is the title, a word that comes from a completely forgettable poem that says nothing about anything.

The poem is barely relevant and brings nothing to a story loosely based on the fish marine creature that evolved into a terrestrial being. The tale, much like the dead mother, is repeated constantly to make sure that you don’t miss it in between naps or due to your low IQ. However, it is never quite clear who the fish is supposed to be. Furthermore, none of the options make sense. Click here if you don’t want spoilers because we’re about to get into it.

Is the fish the main character, who loses hope and decides to be part of the goo? How is that “adapting”? Is it some sort of mother Earth will kill us all to survive kinda of thing? And if that’s the case, why does the outside look like Blade Runner 2049 (2017)? Everything is dusty and orange. Isn’t the Earth supposed to be more lively and clean when we die?

Now, the second option, are the children the fish of the story? How is carving your eyes out evolution? There is no change there, no forward, they are not adapting, just mutilating themselves into survival. They don’t have any special mechanism to survive, resembling more the prehistoric beings that refused to change and managed to survive as they were, rather than the brand-new species that just turned up.

Thank god for the visuals

Before wrapping up, the cinematography is worth further analysis. Blur blunder aside, the final result is gorgeous thanks to both the cinematography and the production design. The use of colours and countless textures at the beginning encourage your mind to run wild with the possibilities.

The change from colour to black and white, and even the red scene, all add to the experience, effectively highlighting the emotions of the audience. This mise en scène is completed some with very expressive editing that shares concepts and thoughts by connecting different close-ups with certain situations. Ever wondered what happened to men who think oral sex is disgusting when it’s women receiving it? Well, wonder no more!

All in all, Else presents a very interesting concept that could have benefitted from a less arrogant approach. Overconfidence is the ultimate downfall of a film that had the makings to be superb. The pace and pointless flourishes that sound and look good but mean absolutely nothing completely destroy a piece that could have been amongst the most original of the year.

Advice to take from this movie:

• Don’t blur your images unless there is some three-second subjective POV you want to make. More than that time will make your audience’s eyes hate you.
• If you want someone to kill you, crying and being pitiful is not the best way to go about it.
• It’s OK to cut things out of your film when they don’t bring anything to the table. Kill your darlings, darlings.

What’s your take? Have you watched Else? Don’t hesitate to let me know your thoughts in the comments section below, or leave a message in my contact page! For more reviews and cinema-related articles, check out the rest of my blog! 😀