Bulk,
Directed by Ben Wheatley,
Starring Sam Riley, Alexandra Maria Lara, Noah Taylor, Mark Monero

The Midnight Madness strand returns to the the 78th Edinburgh International Film Festival, and as with last year’s strand, it is where you will find some of the more unusual works at this year’s festival (or as one festival staffer put it in the introduction to the midnight audience, “are you ready to watch some f**ked up movies?” The very first one this year was Ben Wheatley with Bulk, and I have to say I had that very unusual thing of going into a film knowing next to nothing about it in advance, a deliberate move on the part of the film-makers and the festival. How often does that happen today? Most of us have seen clips, interviews, articles etc so we have some context going in.

Not so here, not for me anyway, and I found that quite refreshing (yes I am aware of the irony of talking about not knowing much about a film beforehand, while giving you a review of it!). And, truth be told, no review is really going to give you that much of an idea of quite what to expect here. This is Wheatley back in his more experimental, playful, low-budget mode – having fun on a shoestring, but that tiny budget giving him and his cast and crew a free hand to indulge themselves and explore and play, and, oh boy, do they.

Central to Bulk is the Multiverse – before you groan that this idea those of us who love SF have known about for decades, but which is now everywhere thanks to the Marvel Universe and Everything Everywhere, All At Once has been over-used in the last few years, let me reassure you, no not like this. This is Wheatley playing with the idea and minimalist budget, sets and effects, relying on some clever lighting and framing to make an otherwise normal house and rooms feel slightly otherworldly, as Sam Riley’s journalist wakes from a seemingly drugged sleep to find himself in the back of a car, driven at night by Noah Taylor, to the house.

Is it a kidnapping? An unusual job? Partial pieces of memory come back to him as he is taken inside and introduced to Alexandra Maria Lara’s character, who talks about Mark Monero famous tech-genius and a peculiar accident when trying to tap into other dimensions for energy. Woozy from some sort of drug or poison, Riley’s character is lead through events, often clueless, but slowly starting to pick up bits and pieces, except, the pieces being scattered across dimensions, they don’t all fit together, or even work together, while the same is true of the small cast (who appear as multiple versions of themselves).

(above, Ben Wheatley and his cast, talking in the Cameo Cinema to the film festival audience after the midnight premiere of his film, Bulk; below, director Ben Wheatley talking after the first screening of Bulk, pics from my Flickr)

The effects in the other worlds are delightfully low-fi, almost like a graduation project film by a particularly gifted student – yes, those are old Airfix model kits bashed together to make very (deliberately) obvious warplanes, or a model Land Rover on an also-obvious model terrain. There’s a sheer delight to much of this, the basic but fun visual effects, even to the confusion the narrative sows in its wake, and the midnight audience were laughing along in many places, enjoying the heck out of it.

(some of the cast and crew of Ben Wheatley’s film, Bulk, talking to the audience after the premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, pic from my Flickr)

This isn’t the sort of film you can sum up easily in a review, not in narrative terms – this is a classic head-trip piece of film-making, and a total blast to boot. It won’t be for everyone, but those of us who loved Ben’s more out-there work like A Field in England will be on board for this, they will get and happily go along for the ride. The film, for all its tiny budget and lean running time, is packed with references to so many inspirations, from odd SF like Alphaville to the venerable 2000 AD comic, and the hand-written closing credits pay tribute to many of these inspirations.

As I left the cinema at two o’clock in the morning, I heard two people behind me discussing the film, and one saying how glad they were we still had Film4, and that they were up for helping get wonderfully weird, experimental films like this made, and that chap was absolutely right.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films