4 stars
It’s only natural to want to talk about an exciting movie like Pandemonium. The moment it ends, your head will be full of ideas about what it all means, and your film-loving heart will want to encourage everyone within earshot to stop what they are doing and watch it. Now.
While your enthusiasm for the trip writer/director Quarxx (All the Gods in the Sky) takes you on with his latest film will convince others to get on board, finding the right words to describe what the movie is about is much more complicated.
You can describe the plot or at least the beginning of it. A man named Nathan (Hugo Dillon) wakes up on the side of a mountain road and sees his car is a total wreck after slamming into the mountain. He remembers hitting a motorcyclist and gradually builds up the courage to look for the body. He finds it, but the cyclist, Daniel (Arben Bajraktarajai), stands there waiting for him, looking unharmed. Experienced genre film fans will quickly jump to the conclusion that Nathan and Daniel didn’t survive the crash and the figures up there talking over the bodies are something beyond alive. Or beyond death, depending on your POV. It’s a pretty good guess; It’s also the last time that Pandemonium comes anything close to predictable.
Is that enough to capture the gist of Quarxx’s story? Not even close. Unless your audience has a few hours to spare, including 90 minutes to watch the movie, you’re better off giving just a few highlights. There are monsters, plenty of cool-looking, scary, practical effects monsters. There’s blood and gore, but never to the level of gore for grossness. The acting is strong throughout, no small achievement given the strange scenarios the performers bring to life. The script is wild and unpredictable, but Quarxx keeps it grounded in reality – or at least believability – even at its weirdest. There is a creepy kid in part of the movie, which is good or bad, depending on how you feel about creepy kids in films. Love or hate them, though, kudos to Manon Maindivide for giving a performance cranked up to 11.
Visceral thrills aside, Pandemonium also gives the audience something they don’t get from many movies these days: Something to think over and discuss after the film. You can keep it simple and just try to imagine how you would react if you were stuck in limbo like Nathan or Daniel. You can go deep and talk about the meaning and symbolism that Quarxx has packed into his film. Or you can spend hours debating all those unforgettable WTF moments packed into Pandemonium.
