Enter The Void

(2009)***

An american drug dealer living in Tokyo is shot down during a raid. His soul drifts about through the scenes of his life past, present and beyond. He relives the fatal car crash that killed his parents and left him and his sister orphaned. He floats through their separation to different foster homes and their reunion in adulthood as their unnatural obsessive relationship is rekindled. His soul even enters the body of a man having sex with her as he experiences it from that first hand perspective. He sees his best friend betraying him, the progression and his inevitable demise.

Apparently the afterlife is fucking trippy.

I have serious mixed feelings about this film. The entire film is shot from first person perspective so it's a floating camera experience. The scene transitions consist of floating above and through buildings as well as long segments of kaleidoscope type fractal imagery. I seriously believe the director was either on acid throughout the filming or editing process. The concept is very unique and the story, uncomfortable and disturbing as it may be, comes full circle to eventually reach an ending that makes perfect sense. The film is two hours and twenty minutes long, I'd say close to half of that is looking at trippy colors and floating over buildings. Well, maybe not half but it certainly feels like it. Still the film stayed with me far longer than I expected making me dissect his life from the abnormal borderline incestuous relationship with his sister to the descent into drug dealing. There are some truly horrific visual moments which the camera tends to linger on long enough to make it very uncomfortable to watch. But is it horror? Kinda. To be honest, I wouldn't rightfully know where to place this in the genre lineup.