I'm not easily confused, and often love surreal incoherent storytelling. But this one I just couldn't figure out.
we get a prologue sequence involving some guy breaking into someone's house and threatening them with a gun. the guy is apparently a surgeon and they discuss some manner of MacGuffin book, which the surgeon has only read 40 pages of in 6 weeks. Then he twists and says he read up to page 43 and a tentacle thing drags the other guy into a closet, then a random hook swings from the ceiling and kills the surgeon.
20 minutes into the future (GET IT COS MATT FREWER IS IN THE MOVIE) some guy named Luke is doing... something on behalf of Mr Fairweather, played by Matt Frewer. He tracks down 10 people who are apparently naughty, and... who knows. Maybe he kills them, but Mr Fairweather explicitly says at one point that he doesn't need Luke for killing people.
Since he couldn't "get" the 10th man, Mr Fairweather gives him a package to give to the man who is so good and righteous, but then gets ambushed by some goonies and escapes and opens up the package and it's the same MacGuffin book the surgeon guy had.
Some other "employer" guy named Mr Lamont then arrives on the scene, and his goon shoots Mr Fairweather's head off with a shotgun. Despite this, Mr Fairweather continues to call up Luke about the book with much of his head missing and gorey. When other people listen in on his phone call, all they hear is flies buzzing from Fairweather's end.
Luke keeps reading the book, which basically has no story, and suffering lots of memory loss and keeps repeating things. At the same time, his daughter comes to live with him, and some of Mr Lamont's goons bug his tenement and spy on him from another room.
Looking back now, ironically (not ironically) I appear to have tuned out at some point and forgotten large portions of the film. I can remember it, yet I can't fully "remember" it and properly describe what happens. There's a lot of seemingly incoherent elements put together, including a monster-version of Luke's daughter that he knows isn't real, a running theme of him being unable to find his keys, and him randomly turning into a demon who rages and freaks out about being unable to find his keys, all the while the guys spying on him just sort of dick around, one of them occasionally getting into the MacGuffin book and Luke's story, while the original owner of the tenement they killed earlier suddenly comes back as a zombie and kills one of them while the other one decides to quit and leaves.
The Surgeon from the prologue also keeps appearing to Luke, and random hooks swing constantly from the ceiling, almost killing Luke, but which he manages to avoid each time. There's also an elderly couple in another tenement who keep spying on everyone, and the husband gets infested by the creature that the Surgeon was trying to dissect and the wife ends up killing him.
The big climax at the end involves Luke confronting the demonic version of his daughter, and his daughter confronting the demonic version of Luke, and making amends with each other when Mr Lamont abruptly appears, congratulates them, rewards them, takes the book and leaves. The Surgeon then appears with Mr Lamont at the end.
Somehow all of this is supposed to tie together, but it just narrowly manages to slip from my grasp and I just plain didn't understand it. It narrowly avoids becoming "random for the sake of random" while never fully "clicking" into a coherent arc. It's frustrating and probably necessitates multiple viewings, but there's just not much in this movie that was sufficiently intriguing or appealing enough to warrant another viewing. It was largely tedious and frustrating, with a neo-noirish style that had a constant "Original cut of Blade Runner" style voiceover narration that contributed nothing and just made me hate the protagonist.
we get a prologue sequence involving some guy breaking into someone's house and threatening them with a gun. the guy is apparently a surgeon and they discuss some manner of MacGuffin book, which the surgeon has only read 40 pages of in 6 weeks. Then he twists and says he read up to page 43 and a tentacle thing drags the other guy into a closet, then a random hook swings from the ceiling and kills the surgeon.
20 minutes into the future (GET IT COS MATT FREWER IS IN THE MOVIE) some guy named Luke is doing... something on behalf of Mr Fairweather, played by Matt Frewer. He tracks down 10 people who are apparently naughty, and... who knows. Maybe he kills them, but Mr Fairweather explicitly says at one point that he doesn't need Luke for killing people.
Since he couldn't "get" the 10th man, Mr Fairweather gives him a package to give to the man who is so good and righteous, but then gets ambushed by some goonies and escapes and opens up the package and it's the same MacGuffin book the surgeon guy had.
Some other "employer" guy named Mr Lamont then arrives on the scene, and his goon shoots Mr Fairweather's head off with a shotgun. Despite this, Mr Fairweather continues to call up Luke about the book with much of his head missing and gorey. When other people listen in on his phone call, all they hear is flies buzzing from Fairweather's end.
Luke keeps reading the book, which basically has no story, and suffering lots of memory loss and keeps repeating things. At the same time, his daughter comes to live with him, and some of Mr Lamont's goons bug his tenement and spy on him from another room.
Looking back now, ironically (not ironically) I appear to have tuned out at some point and forgotten large portions of the film. I can remember it, yet I can't fully "remember" it and properly describe what happens. There's a lot of seemingly incoherent elements put together, including a monster-version of Luke's daughter that he knows isn't real, a running theme of him being unable to find his keys, and him randomly turning into a demon who rages and freaks out about being unable to find his keys, all the while the guys spying on him just sort of dick around, one of them occasionally getting into the MacGuffin book and Luke's story, while the original owner of the tenement they killed earlier suddenly comes back as a zombie and kills one of them while the other one decides to quit and leaves.
The Surgeon from the prologue also keeps appearing to Luke, and random hooks swing constantly from the ceiling, almost killing Luke, but which he manages to avoid each time. There's also an elderly couple in another tenement who keep spying on everyone, and the husband gets infested by the creature that the Surgeon was trying to dissect and the wife ends up killing him.
The big climax at the end involves Luke confronting the demonic version of his daughter, and his daughter confronting the demonic version of Luke, and making amends with each other when Mr Lamont abruptly appears, congratulates them, rewards them, takes the book and leaves. The Surgeon then appears with Mr Lamont at the end.
Somehow all of this is supposed to tie together, but it just narrowly manages to slip from my grasp and I just plain didn't understand it. It narrowly avoids becoming "random for the sake of random" while never fully "clicking" into a coherent arc. It's frustrating and probably necessitates multiple viewings, but there's just not much in this movie that was sufficiently intriguing or appealing enough to warrant another viewing. It was largely tedious and frustrating, with a neo-noirish style that had a constant "Original cut of Blade Runner" style voiceover narration that contributed nothing and just made me hate the protagonist.