"Gaia" beautifully shot and unsettling eco-horror

Gaia (2021)


South African director Jaco Bouwer’s ecological horror film “Gaia” takes place before an apocalypse, but something seems dread-inducing from the very start. Like “The Ruins,” “Annihilation" and, most recently, Ben Wheatley’s “In the Earth,” nature and the unknown retaliate against humanity in ways that are unsettling and oddly beautiful. It could work as a companion piece to those films with its flora imagery and ideas about metamorphoses, but “Gaia” more than stands on its own in the soil.

When game ranger Gabi (Monique Rockman) and her boss, Winston (Anthony Oseyemi), are surveying the woods from a canoe on the river, they agree to meet back in an hour when one of their drones goes offline. Before the drone went black, Gabi caught sight of an emaciated, mud-smeared man in the forest. Winston states his bad feeling about splitting up, but Gabi insists, as she doesn’t want to leave their trash behind. Sure enough, Gabi gets caught in a trap set up by a Neo-Luddite father and son, Barend (Carel Nel) and Stefan (Alex van Dyck), living off the land. With her foot severely injured, Gabi must trust these two men, who may be far less threatening than what lurks in the trees. 

Referring to the primordial earth goddess in Greek mythology (“Mother Nature”), “Gaia” does not play nice with its human trespassers. Captivating and tense from the word go, the film begins with an overhead shot of lush forest trees, resembling broccoli florets, before turning 180 degrees upside down. It’s in these early sections where Jorrie van Der Walt’s stunning cinematography and Pierre-Henri Wicomb’s bone-shakingly ominous score work most effectively in setting the tone and tempo before the script, written by Tertius Kapp, tends to spin its wheels a bit. Director Bouwer sure likes his dream sequences, too, but the film still remains distinct in its visual storytelling before becoming closer to a fever dream with floating spores, fungi growing in places they shouldn’t, and time-lapse nature photography. Flirting with being a creature feature but remaining creepily inscrutable and alluring, “Gaia” manages to get under one’s skin.

Grade: B

NEON is releasing “Gaia” (96 min.) in theaters on June 18, 2021 and on demand June 25, 2021. 

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