THE FALL

Produced, Directed, Written, Edited, and Videotaped by Andrew Kasch and Marten Long

Hero - Harry Fields
Doctor - Roy Roberts
Antagonist - Brad Jewel
Suckling - Brandon Hamilton

Sweet baby Jesus, now this is underground cinema at its finest - raw and beautiful. THE FALL is an mindblowingly painful exercise in cerebral brutality that leaves viewers battered and bloody from the visceral, visual assault.

I'm not even sure where to begin as I'm still trying to process everything. Told silently, the silent images form a linear plot, that's easy enough to follow, as least as far as the action is concerned. It's the motivations that are different. And like the best works of Jack Ketchum, the "why's" are left completely open. Things just are the way they are.

Off in the distance, a sack lined with veins is suspended in the air. Our hero claws his way out, like a baby alligator fighting for his birth; his reward is that first breath of air. Once free of his placental confines, our hero falls into the murky body of water below. Naked and confused, a fully grown newborn, our hero never has time to get a footing before the entire world makes him its prey.

Wandering the slum in which he was born, our hero sees others in the shadows, but he doesn't know enough to be afraid. Some are just as confused as he is; others just want to hear him scream. Either way, everyone around him looks as if they've just escaped from a lunatic asylum.

At one point our hero is tied down. A "doctor" slices open his abdomen almost as if symbolically severing his umbilical cord. As abruptly as the torture starts, it stops, and our hero is off on his dazed journey. He finds himself in a room with others like him, pulling meat and fungus from the walls, eating the sickening material.

The walls ooze. They're alive. One has a face that cries out for food. A woman answers with her supple breast. It's Salvador Dali's darkest moment.

The cries of the suckling, along with our hero's screams of pain, are the closest the movie comes to dialog. Rarely is there any music as the director opts for natural soundscapes. The result is more uncomfortable and downright creepier than any more could hope to have been.

Our hero follows the laughter of a little girl down a dark hall, and eventually down a dark stairwell - decent into hell. He's a Jesus born from an immaculate eggsack who must face a devil. A woman slithers on the ground like a serpent. She releases a howl like a pod person from INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. Perhaps he's a body snatcher born without a body? Ostracized among his own kind.

Given a crown of barbwire thorns, our hero is crucified. His life over as quickly as it began. He never had a chance to sin, and all he knew was fear. His death as insignificant as his birth.

Directors Kasch and Long film their stark work in black and white. There's little gray tones which emphasizes the gritty textures making the environments bleaker, harsher. The sense of viral decay runs rampant; it makes me want to throw up. It's a reaction. Few films elicit a physical reaction from the audience. That's how I know the film's power, it makes me want to vomit. I never thought those words could be praise before now.

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