It’s 1955, and the world is about to end…
A young woman wakes up in an underground tunnel, with a creature with a bandage-wrapped head dragging her away. She can’t remember who she is or how she got there, but after she beats the creature to death, she finds an ID card identifying her as a cook named Frances.
Naturally, we don’t believe it. Not after she kills a few more of the creatures, at least.
She finds a scientist who has also lost his memory, and learns that some sort of military-run scientific experiment has gone very wrong. Or is it exactly a scientific experiment? The notebook left by one of the dead scientists is crammed full of strange equations and occult symbols: a weird mixture of science and superstition which seems to have a pattern to it…
I have to admit that I breathed a sigh of relief when I found out that another reviewer had already noted the rather clear resemblances to Resident Evil. One hates to be the first one to point out the obvious (it came, if you are interested, in a phrase I dearly wish I’d thought of first, “Resident Evil with a stiff upper lip”). We have yet another amnesiac woman who is the secret fail-safe weapon if things go wrong, we have secret experiments, tunnels — and the expected collection of creatures loose in them. Admittedly, Laura Swift’s Frances is far more hands-on than Milla Jovovich: she is forced to batter the creatures to death, mostly with her bare hands, and without the elegant gymnastics — or the guns that never run out of bullets — of Resident Evil‘s Alice.
While the scenes in the tunnels after the mysterious incident are somewhat bland visually, the extensive flashbacks to the events before are far more interesting, with a definite Fifties ambiance and an evocative portrayal of the Cold War paranoia of the era. There is something chillingly believable in the idea that those behind the project could be drawn into something that evil by their desire for power, even slaughtering their own soldiers as a blood sacrifice to keep the inter-dimensional portal open.
If that’s what you would call their doorway into somewhere else.
I particularly like the idea that the scientists involved start out thinking that the information they’ve been given is pure superstitious nonsense, but soon find themselves drawn ever deeper into it by the realization that so much of it is tied to genuine physics, by the new discoveries they start making — and the promise of fame and glory yet to come.
The Rizen offers an impressive package of thrills, violence, paranoia, gore, and Lovecraftian horror, all within a convincing Fifties setting. While it might not be the best film out there on the Festival circuit right now, it is a potent kick-in-the-teeth of a movie, made with a lot of talent and attention to detail.
It certainly is better than any survival horror film you’ll find at the multiplex any time soon.
rivets on the poster 