Review: Upstream Color

By Steve Wood

If you are unfamiliar with Shane Carruth, consider yourself rewarded by stumbling across this gem of a film, if you can even call it that…and I mean that in the best way possible. Written, directed, scored and produced by Shane himself, his genius ploughs through the screen and directly into your eyes and ears.

The score begins immediately, accompanying the film perfectly, and is almost continuously in the background throughout the film. I will really try and not include spoilers here, as this is a really convoluted story, almost to a fault, but that’s the beauty, it leaves you wanting a second viewing.

The film opens with kids witnessing a man placing a plastic bag filled with paper into a dumpster, shortly after; this same man is seen harvesting what looks to be maggots out of plant soil. Once this is done, these maggot type things are placed inside of pill capsules.

This man, who is referred to in the credits as “The Thief”, is seen following our lead character, Kris. As she is seen entering what is possibly a restroom, the scene immediately following shows The Thief dragging an unconscious Kris out of a back door into the rain. As the disturbing scene continues, The Thief places a CPR mask onto her face, but before doing so, fills the mask with water and a maggot, pumping the fluid violently into her mouth. As she wakes, she gets up in confusion and stumbles away, but turns back and is for some reason drawn to The Thief.

Sure, that sounds interesting enough, but this is merely the beginning of an experience that will leave you longing for more. The dialogue in the first half of the film is very minimal; the scenes rely on visuals rather than the characters speaking.

As Kris awakes from the dilemma involving The Thief, she notices that her skin is literally crawling, with what looks like worms just under the surface of her skin. After attempting to cut them out with a knife, we see her walking aimlessly up to a man, in the middle of a field, who is recording nature sounds near his RV.

This man owns a pig farm, and while extracting this very long parasite from her body, he transplants it into a live pig, which is then tagged with “Kris”, and put into a pen with other pigs, which all have tags on their ears.

The next morning she wakes up in her car, along the freeway, she has come to find that her house looks as if someone has gone through every drawer, looking for something valuable. Later, she finds that her bank account is depleted.

Enter Shane Carruth’s character – Jeff, meeting Kris on the train for the first time. Their initial interaction is as if they look familiar to one another, and Jeff is immediately drawn towards her. Their strange interactions continue for an unknown matter of days, but they both immediately divulge personal information as a way to “save time”, not really explaining the urgency to get to know one another, we’re merely watching as a relationship builds between two strangers.

As their relationship becomes stronger, Jeff begins to share life experiences, which Kris states are her own memories, and finds that there is no possible way they can both share such similar things within their lives.

Days pass, and Kris sees that Jeff has similar markings on his body that were made on her own body when she visited the man who removed the parasitic entity from her body.

That’s where I end this review; the film really needs to be seen by anyone who enjoys science fiction. Shane Carruth is a unique director and editor, as this is filled with smash cuts, quick editing, and voice-over mixing with scenes where the characters are speaking with each other.

This is easily one of my top 5 of 2013 so far, something about this will really stick with you. At least, it did with me.

Rating: 9/10