Review: Journey of Shadows is a surreal, challenging nightmare that defies description

Today marks the start of the Ottawa International Animation Festival, which looks to be a great event (I hope to attend someday!). So I thought I should take a look at a movie I watched last month that has stuck with me, and which is playing in competition at the festival, Yves Netzhammer's surreal and challenging Journey of Shadows.

The link I was provided for the film was accompanied by an e-mail that said, quite frankly, that the film will likely never find U.S. distribution. Within the opening moments of the movie, I saw why. This is one of those movies that will likely cause a knee-jerk reaction in viewers as soon as they see it, because isn't...shall we say...particularly pleasant to look at. I don't really know how to aptly describe the aesthetic here. It's a lot of smooth surfaces and simple figures, repeating shapes and kaleidoscopic weirdness. Just look at the images that accompany this review. It feels like something that might be hard to look at, much less to actually watch for ninety minutes. As humans who largely rely on visual input to understand and appreciate the world around us, I get why the film's look can be such a hurdle, and I think that's probably why its Letterboxd curve looks like this:

But I try my damnedest to give every film a fair shake, to let go of any pre-conceived notions or flash-bang feelings and meet the film where it is for where it's at, and rarely have I ever been so glad that I did. Because this movie is fucking awesome. So much so, in fact, that a recent Twitter prompt asking users to list their four favorite horror films of the year led me to realize that this makes that list for me! Even though some people might watch this and not even see it as a horror movie. I love when I can describe a movie as a Rorschach test, and I think this one certainly qualifies. A hundred people will see this a hundred different ways, which is pretty awesome.

I'm sure some people won't even approach this movie because of its appearance (also the fact that it's going to be a tough one to track down). Some who sit down to watch it might not make it very far. But I hope that some people will stick it out with an open mind and see what I saw, or something akin to it. Because I think this is a really special movie. One that I surely won't ever forget.

Here's what I wrote on Letterboxd when I watched the film last month: 

A hugely compelling example of animation's power as a medium. Even when a movie looks like this -- relatively simple aesthetically, all smooth surfaces and repetitive geometry -- the feelings this elicits are so visceral, so heightened. It's unsettling and strange, sometimes borderline pornographic, often deeply horrific. 

I don't know how I'd begin to attempt to parse the narrative here. I'm not sure that's really the point. This feels like its reason for existing could simply be to be a surreal art film (it certainly succeeds in that respect). 

But there's plenty to chew on thematically, and I think a hundred people could have a hundred different reads on what's going on here. Maybe it's an ecological imperative, a call to protect the natural world from the human-driven violence of industrial expansion. Maybe it's a romance about finding identity and connection in a world that's determined to eliminate difference. Maybe it's a condemnation of the prison-industrial complex. Whatever it is, it's certainly a showcase of some of the most bizarre body horror I've ever seen. 

This falls into a very, very special category of film: something I loved that I would hesitate to recommend to anyone. Because it's so odd, so off-putting, so singular in a way that could easily be read as inaccessibility. But I think it's really cool and hypnotic, and hopefully it finds an audience, however niche that crowd might be.

If you're at OIAF, I urge you to check out Journey of Shadows. It plays at the fest on Thursday, September 26 at 11:00am and Friday, September 27 at 3:00pm.