Foreign
DVD Review: ‘Eden Log’
Imagine waking to find you have no memory of who or where you are, and no recollection of how you got there. Add to that that you’re covered in some kind of mud in pitch-black darkness surrounded by what feel like hundreds of dead bodies and the only light you have to navigate your way is a repetitive flask of bright light every few seconds. Do you feel claustrophobic? Uneasy? Nervous?
If so, good. That’s the most genuine and effective feeling that ‘Eden Log’ will instill in the viewer for the entire 98 minutes to come, as the movie snowballs downhill from this, the only successful scene in the movie. To be honest, even this scene ultimately fails as it’s drawn out way too long and becomes painfully tedious by the time something actually happens in the movie. The viewer is more likely to slip into a boredom induced come than actually maintain any real interest in ‘Eden Log’.
The failure of this film is unfortunate, because I remember seeing the trailer for ‘Eden Log’ and immediately thinking this would be one fascinating new French science-fiction flick with a great story and beautiful cinematography. Alas, the film became the exact opposite of everything I had hoped for. Written and directed by Franck Vestiel (first assistant director on ‘Dante 01’) the movie seems to have lost it’s way before it even got started.
The story of ‘Eden Log’… well, what story there is, follows Tolbiac (Clovis Cornillac) on a journey of escape from a dark, abandoned mine sometime in the future. He awakes in the bottom of this deep shaft with amnesia and must rely on the help of a female botanist and some secret cells called REZO ZERO to find his way out, all while being followed by savage, mutated humanoid creatures. The plot that attempts to build itself around this basic storyline is extremely convoluted, lacks direction and fails to ever really explain, or even elude to any answers. This is exasperated by the fact that the events taking place on screen raise many questions, due greatly to the extensive plot holes) and yet the film end’s without tying up any loose ends.
Two of the biggest areas of interest that are developed but minimally dealt with are… Eden itself, which I found myself wondering if this is the futuristic city, the society, what is Eden Log… and the other being, what is the story and meaning of the mysterious tree? Tell me more! It’s cruel, especially to sci-fi fans like myself, to dip just the tip of our toes into an additively curious pool of ideas like this and then never let us get any deeper. The opportunity to even fill in the blanks ourselves is absent, making it more realistic and rewarding for us to simply rewrite the story in our own heads from scratch.
‘Eden Log’ has virtually no audio. There’s a bit of under-modulated scoring here and there, a few lines of useful dialogue scattered about and some rudimentary sound effects, but for the most part this is a dull and quiet auditory experience. Visually, the film attempts to convey a bleak but engaging high-contrast look, similar to that of ‘Pi’ or ‘Tetsuo: Iron Man’ but fails. The entire film struck me as being shot of digital with the color mostly desaturated and the contrast blown way out, often bleeding into unwelcome territory, creating a lack of depth and detail. To be frank, I found the cinematography to be rather amateurish.
The ‘Eden Log’ Blu-Ray and DVD hit store shelves on May 19, 2009 but I don’t recommend buying this one until you’ve wasted $5 on renting it to decide if you even like the film or not. I’m sure they will be some hardcore sci-fi fanatics that appreciate this, somehow, and more power to them if they do. I simply couldn’t find any way to like the film myself, feeling drained and attentively spent by the end of the viewing. Oh yeah, and if you were hoping for some cool featurettes or special features on the DVD to explain some things or make-up for the disappointing cinematic encounter, don’t get your hopes up. There are a total of ZERO, NONE, NADA on this release!
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