Gently Up the Stream

Upstream Color (2013) is an odd mix of horror and art film - or maybe surrealist horror. I guess the reviews weren’t great when it came out, because for some reason I avoided it. I think I got it confused with another amnesia movie, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. I avoided that because Jim Carey.

This starts with a variety of kids taking a drug, which seemed to put their minds in sync. Then we see a man making the drug out of a flower, some fungus and the grubs in the dirt of the flower. He uses it to drug a woman, Amy Seidetz, give her hypnotic suggestions, make her do strange tasks, and empty her bank account. This is very creepy. He finally leaves and sets her free. She wakes up to find worms crawling under her skin, which she tries to cut out.

This made me think the movie is a metaphor for amphetamine or cocaine - a famous side effect is the sensation of bugs under the skin. They made a movie about that too, Bug, but I don’t ever want to see it.

The next scene has her wander up to a kind of ambulance with weird sounds coming out of loudspeakers. Mad scientist Andrew Sensenig, looking somewhat Stellan Skarsgaard, helps her by removing the worm and transferring it to the body of a piglet.

Later, we see her meet writer/director/co-star Shane Carruth. He is attracted to her, although she fends him off. She tells him she in therapy for memory loss and shows him her meds. He is taken aback, but they have seem to have some kind of bond. They begin to date and move in together. At some point, she notices that he has the same worm-under-the-skin scars that she has. Slowly they piece together, partly by telepathy, what has happened to them.

This is interspersed with scenes of Sensenig visiting his pigs. When he sits with them, he perceives the lives of other people, including Seidetz and Carruth. It seems that he has a psychic connection to them as well. His other hobby is to record natural or ambient sounds in the field, and manipulate them into the sounds we heard from his loudspeakers - to attract the affected?

I won't tell you that it's all clear in the end, but it isn't all that mysterious. 

Part of the mystery is how this is filmed and edited. The movie is full of disjointed shots and scenes, each one interesting, sometimes beautiful. But it's not always clear what information you are supposed to take away, or how much time has passed since the last shot, or who these people are.

It is a beautiful experience, even though there is a lot of ugliness in it. It is also moving, although maybe a bit pretentious. It also isn't quite a horror film, but it is pretty scary.