Trance

This doesn't quite cohere, but I'm willing to accept this as a remarkable piece of unsuccessful art, which is one of my favourite things, even if I can never manage to grant a truly favourable score.

Inventive use of (semi?) motivated lighting. Often a few candles are used as an excuse for harsh, sourcey amber light

Really lovely. Almost a kind of remake of "Stalker," via Peter Weir's "Picnic at Hanging Rock" [the latter itself a remake of the former, as some have suggested], with an area that represents 'the zone,' and its mystery never explained ["We can't know where our pain is from-- nevertheless, we suffer from it"]. There's almost a Ken Russell amount of silliness in the last half-hour or so, but its eeriness is somehow maintained. Walken's performance is kind of surprisingly understated??

I really can't imagine seeing this in any other context than as a Michael Almereyda film, because it fits perfectly into his absurdly underrated oeuvre. The idea that a studio would even attempt to pawn this off as a direct-to-video horror movie just seems absurd, as it has probably even less to do with that genre than Nadja in a lot of ways (even if it does involve a druid mummy). If any studio tampering was involved, it's hard to detect because it feels completely of a piece with his others.