Review of Communion (1989) by Al M — 19 Jul 2010

A worthy example of the cinema of disorientation. I remember being struck by the book, which I'd read because I'd loved Strieber's Wolfen. I don't accept the actual presence of "aliens", either within our dimension or seeping in through our minds, however if ever a case could be made, perhaps this book and film make it.

Whatever the book was, and it spooked me, the film is something slightly different. I have to love the visuals and mood created onscreen, the use of obviously fake aliens to suggest the idea of the real.

Clearly the hope is to prompt the imagination to reach beyond the frame and conjure the uncertain sense of a memory and awareness of something or someone on the limn of awareness, a presence. To do this Mora creates some fun-looking creatures doing comical things and the whole tone takes on a rather noirish tinge with lovingly disorienting camera angles.

Add to this a truly splendid performance by Walken and you get something unique and worth watching for reasons other than giving yourself the creeps late at night. Odd that this one isn't pitched as an art house flick, as it works as one, and that is perhaps it's rather unique pleasure.

Being neither mainstream genre pic or art house flick, it straddles yet another liminal line between other types of expectations, perhaps inadvertently, but satisfyingly in its own quirky way.