Fantasia continued with a screening of Norbert Keil's body horror piece, Replace.
When Kira's (Rebecca Forsythe) skin
starts to inexplicably decay and flake off, she discovers she can
replenish it with that of other women.
I wasn't crazy about this movie, but
I'll start with the positive. I was really impressed with the look of
this movie and how it visually represented Toronto. Kira's apartment
had this really strange layout that could only exist in a movie and I
kind of dug that. Odd at first was the relationship between Kira & her neighbour Sophia (Lucie Aron), actually reminding me of those
awkward dubbed conversations you see in old gialli, but even that
kind of grew on me after a while. It could also be that Aron reminded
me of Asia Argento.
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| The Big Smoke. |
I think scene to scene, Replace just
felt uneven to me. I was slightly confused in that it seemed to exist
out of time. Kira rocked an ancient flip phone, yet Sophia busted out
a futuristic projection screen. As soon as the movie started
escalating, it didn't really flow together as well as it should have.
A few revelations toward the end helped to alleviate some of my
grievances, but not all. I would wager that the more surrealist
qualities of the movie were perhaps the contribution of co-writer
Richard Stanley, but I was lukewarm on how that mixed with the
science here.
Due to these distractions, I didn't
feel nearly as connected to the characters as I was supposed to.
That's a problem because body horror is all about its visceral nature
and response. The special effects were solid, but even with those I
often experienced a strange disconnect. Barbara Crampton showed up
and gave the project some gravitas, but not enough to anchor the
movie down once it started meandering in the middle.
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| Rebecca Forsythe (left) & Barbara Crampton in Replace |
Visually I thought Replace was a
success, but I just wish the other elements came together as well.
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