Eden Log

Have you ever lay in bed, with the lights totally off, and just sat and though? Have you ever, later that night, been surprised that even though you were doing nothing, for at least a brief period, sensory deprivation was not boring, because you could at least have interesting thoughts? Eden Log is the exact opposite. Despite the fact that you're watching a film, and the film is about something that if you merely described it would seem really interesting, you are so bored you actually start wishing you were watching a home video of an old woman washing dishes. It is actually more boring than the Mothman Prophecies. This is a level of borring you cannot describe. When I was young, in Religious Education I was asked to compile a list of advice I might give to an unborn child about life. It seems to me now that none of the things I wrote is so important that I wouldn't replace them with "don't watch Eden Log".

The film is so poorly shot I didn't notice it was in Black and White. Seriously. For nearly ten minutes at the beginning of the film you watch this dude crawling out of a freezing pit of mud, slowly and laboriously toward some seriously funky disco lighting. I jokingly turned to the person I was watching the film with and said "Heh, I hope it's not all like this". It was. Imagine an old crippled woman with arthritis and only one leg, which is broken, trying to get out of a chair. Now imagine it in poor lighting conditions. And when I say poor I mean SUPER poor. So poor it doesn't even occur to you it's black and white. Now, most of the time when people say black and white, they mean including intermediary shades of gray. I don't. They say, on the back that the film uses stunning special effects. I think this is true. The special effects are truly breathtaking. SO great, I tried to apply a similar special effect to a photograph of a couple of my friends playing on a tractor farm taken on holiday in Ireland. Included. Impressed?

Well I'm not joking. a lot of the time I got the impression something was happening. Now, this film is actually a dub (originally French). Thankfully the dubbing is very tasteful. Well, actually, there's almost no dialogue, so there's not a lot that could go wrong. On one hand I think if you just watched the film in French, it would be just as good. Most of the stuff which is said makes not a smidgen of sense. Also, where you to close your eyes, the film would not be ruined. When there IS light, the camera is not pointed at the stuff I got the impression must be happening. If I knew what was going on, it was from the screams, moans or breathing.

I cannot emphasize this enough- this is the single worst film I have ever seen. It's not one of those films that makes more sense at the end. Believe me, when the stupid cold dude climbs out of the pool and finally gets the light to stop blinking, it's as illuminated as you will ever be. Metaphorically and literally. You might want to watch this just to see that I am not exadurating. A lot of the time you feel like you have genuinely really missed something important. Like when the main character, who has been effectively totally alone the entire film, disoriented walking though this odd compound in which you can only assume virtually everyone is dead, walks into a room, listens to six second recording and then wanders out wearing a uniform and joins the rest of his squadron (who refer to him as sir) to go and fight some monsters, hethen takes off all his clothes absorbs-a-tree-into-his-stomach-causing-it-to-grow-massive-until-the-camera-pans-out-and-you-see-a-city-which-was-never-so-much-as-alluded-to-suddenly-submit-to-a-massive-sweeping-power-cut, which he seems oddly nonchalant about. Then credits. Damn, I might have just given the ending away. Sorry.