Bloody, brutal and disturbingly beautiful, Footsteps' blend of taut psychological horror and unflinching graphic ultra-gore is definitely not for the squeamish. G.H. Evans's innovative thriller is infinitely clever (with artistic nods to Toshiaki Toyoda's Pornostar and flashes of the inimitable Takashi Miike at his darkest and most violent) but also visually gorgeous: the composition and imagery is beguilingly rich and compelling. In particular, the opening sequence ranks among the most uncomfortable and harsh beginnings to any movie I've seen and immediately draws the viewer into the grim world of Evans' nightmare urban dystopia.
The soundtrack suits the mood and visuals perfectly, matching ear-battering electronica to eye-watering gore and elegant, melancholic strings to passages of raw emotion, and occasionally interspersed with long moments of silence which serve to heighten the main character Andrew's obvious social isolation and introversion.
Evans' love for and expert knowledge of Japanese extreme movie-making has clearly informed Footsteps, and he has applied that dynamic to an inherently Western tale of societal breakdown, which will be familiar to anyone who lives in the UK in particular. The plot also faintly echoes Joel Schumacher's Falling Down as well as Martin Scorsese's seminal Taxi Driver, as a morality tale of an ordinary working joe who is given more than adequate incentive to revenge himself on society.
As for the performances, they are never anything less than intriguing and fully credible. Nicholas Bool is stunningly charismatic and powerful in the role of Andrew, portraying him as a somewhat sympathetic hero of sorts, an ingenue out of his depth in the criminal underworld, with just the right mix of aloofness and alienation: his lack of social skills is so accurate, it's almost painful to watch at times. Also of note is Mads Koudal, who delivers a superb, standout performance as the charmless, ruthless and utterly evil Paul.
Set in a clever and complex narrative structure of flashbacks and flashforwards (which occasionally recalls Japanese director Shinji Aoyama's equally intricate plotting), the story follows the failing fortunes of a depressed, uncommunicative young man named Andrew (Nicholas Bool), who is an unskilled factory worker by day and a lonely loser by night. He comes from a broken home - his mother died when he was young, and his father married a much younger woman - and has next to no emotional connection with his long-suffering girlfriend, Sera, who leaves him because he just won't talk to her.
It's not long before Andrew's fragile world is broken down even further by the death of his father, leaving him with no surviving family. The final straw comes at almost exactly the same time, when he is made redundant only days after his dad has died.
Reeling from this final tragedy, he goes home - but instead of unlocking the door and going inside to continue his life of loss, pain, being ground underfoot by Lady Luck, and honest graft being rewarded by nothing but poverty and misery, he makes a snap decision, he loses his last marble, and embarks on a very different life path indeed - one steeped in violence, rage and brutality.
In doing so, Andrew is discovered by a gang of snuff filmmakers, who organise and carry out real-life beatings, murders, sex and drugs, which they then capture on DV camera, and he begins his journey into the filthy underworld of criminal society - and into more danger than he could possibly ever have imagined.
Footsteps presents a disturbing portrait of a bleak, doomed society filled only with drudgery, the threat of imminent redundancy, living on or beneath the poverty line, joyless sex, vicarious thrills and the possibility that at any time, one might get one's head stove in with a baseball bat by someone with no motive other than to make money and get kicks out of your suffering. It's profoundly affecting and edgy, and will strike a deep chord with anyone who's ever felt that British society was going to the dogs thanks to binge drinking, late-night violence, the ever-darkening world of reality TV, and boredom. Yet in Evans' vision, even in the darkness there is still a glimmer of hope for redemption.
This brooding, nihilistic and enigmatic depiction of Britain's vile criminal underworld - or indeed, an extension of its mainstream Saturday night vicious chav culture, come to that - replete with sex, drugs, more drugs, in-your-face violence, amorality and no respect for human life is a highly accomplished and self-assured work and places G.H. Evans right at the forefront of young, cutting-edge British film-making.
The soundtrack suits the mood and visuals perfectly, matching ear-battering electronica to eye-watering gore and elegant, melancholic strings to passages of raw emotion, and occasionally interspersed with long moments of silence which serve to heighten the main character Andrew's obvious social isolation and introversion.
Evans' love for and expert knowledge of Japanese extreme movie-making has clearly informed Footsteps, and he has applied that dynamic to an inherently Western tale of societal breakdown, which will be familiar to anyone who lives in the UK in particular. The plot also faintly echoes Joel Schumacher's Falling Down as well as Martin Scorsese's seminal Taxi Driver, as a morality tale of an ordinary working joe who is given more than adequate incentive to revenge himself on society.
As for the performances, they are never anything less than intriguing and fully credible. Nicholas Bool is stunningly charismatic and powerful in the role of Andrew, portraying him as a somewhat sympathetic hero of sorts, an ingenue out of his depth in the criminal underworld, with just the right mix of aloofness and alienation: his lack of social skills is so accurate, it's almost painful to watch at times. Also of note is Mads Koudal, who delivers a superb, standout performance as the charmless, ruthless and utterly evil Paul.
Set in a clever and complex narrative structure of flashbacks and flashforwards (which occasionally recalls Japanese director Shinji Aoyama's equally intricate plotting), the story follows the failing fortunes of a depressed, uncommunicative young man named Andrew (Nicholas Bool), who is an unskilled factory worker by day and a lonely loser by night. He comes from a broken home - his mother died when he was young, and his father married a much younger woman - and has next to no emotional connection with his long-suffering girlfriend, Sera, who leaves him because he just won't talk to her.
It's not long before Andrew's fragile world is broken down even further by the death of his father, leaving him with no surviving family. The final straw comes at almost exactly the same time, when he is made redundant only days after his dad has died.
Reeling from this final tragedy, he goes home - but instead of unlocking the door and going inside to continue his life of loss, pain, being ground underfoot by Lady Luck, and honest graft being rewarded by nothing but poverty and misery, he makes a snap decision, he loses his last marble, and embarks on a very different life path indeed - one steeped in violence, rage and brutality.
In doing so, Andrew is discovered by a gang of snuff filmmakers, who organise and carry out real-life beatings, murders, sex and drugs, which they then capture on DV camera, and he begins his journey into the filthy underworld of criminal society - and into more danger than he could possibly ever have imagined.
Footsteps presents a disturbing portrait of a bleak, doomed society filled only with drudgery, the threat of imminent redundancy, living on or beneath the poverty line, joyless sex, vicarious thrills and the possibility that at any time, one might get one's head stove in with a baseball bat by someone with no motive other than to make money and get kicks out of your suffering. It's profoundly affecting and edgy, and will strike a deep chord with anyone who's ever felt that British society was going to the dogs thanks to binge drinking, late-night violence, the ever-darkening world of reality TV, and boredom. Yet in Evans' vision, even in the darkness there is still a glimmer of hope for redemption.
This brooding, nihilistic and enigmatic depiction of Britain's vile criminal underworld - or indeed, an extension of its mainstream Saturday night vicious chav culture, come to that - replete with sex, drugs, more drugs, in-your-face violence, amorality and no respect for human life is a highly accomplished and self-assured work and places G.H. Evans right at the forefront of young, cutting-edge British film-making.