LANDING LAKE ** UK 2017 Dir: Cesare P. Libardi di K. 98 mins
A team of satellite engineers head into the forest to repair a radio tower, as they arrive they witness a plane crash. Heading deeper into the woods they come across a lake where they find the stricken plane and rescue 3 people. As they make the decision to head back to the radio tower to call for help they realise that a strange entity is preventing them from leaving the lake, causing members of the group to lose their inhibitions and delve into their most primal desires. The entity does not make its intentions all that clear at first but as the group gets smaller it would seem that it is ultimately after a new host body but who will be the one it chooses?
Landing Lake is a bit of an attack on the viewers senses focusing a lot on sound and colour. It’s preferred use of filter is a very washed out dull grey tone. At times this is effective as they use some flashes of bright colour to emphasise various goings on but for most of the time it’s just very grey. The score is bold, synthy and prominent which I quite enjoyed. Some of the audio however is quite hard to decipher. I found it difficult to understand what the entity was saying for example. When it comes to the FX they did a good job of the make up, costumes and some quite graphic detail involved in the wounds with some cool body horror elements but even this was not enough to overcome the constant greyness of it all. Unfortunately, the story wasn’t always very clear and at times seemed to be following a very ambling plot line. The acting was very weak and lacklustre from lead actress Victoire Vecchierini with rather over aggressive and hysterical actions from Phil Zimmerman and Lee Ravitz. The rest of the cast just kind of bounced around between these styles with varying degrees of success.
Review by Sarah Budd
