Without Name (2016)
Genre: Drama / Mystery
Duration: 93 minuten
Country:
Ireland
Directed by: Lorcan Finnegan
Stars: Niamh Algar, Alan McKenna and James Browne
IMDb score:
5,3 (1.630)
Releasedate: 5 May 2017
Without Name plot
"A psychotropic faery story"
Eric is a surveyor who is known as discreet. He is hired by a company to measure a large forest in rural Ireland. After a few days of work, his girlfriend (who is much younger than his wife) comes to help him, but Eric wants to know more about the madman who used to live in the house where they stay. After some strange sightings in the forest and a few psychedelic mushroom trips, the line between dream and reality begins to blur.
Actors and actresses
Reviews & comments
tbouwh
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- 5809 messages
- 5398 votes
Without Name is a prime example of a film in which the narrative is completely subordinate to the atmosphere it conveys. Debuting full feature director Lorcan Finnegan sets his eco-thriller and psychological drama in the Irish forests, where the troubled and lonely protagonist is surveying land. The motive for this remains vague, even after a Skype conversation with his enigmatic employer. More importantly, Eric, in the wooded area, gradually becoming more of a character in his own right, slowly loses his grip on reality.
Inspiration is never far away in this refreshing genre film. A sunset in the Apocalypse Now style serves as a harbinger of what's to come, while the use of strobe lighting is strongly reminiscent of the epileptic ending of Gaspar Noe's Irreversible (2002). However, effectiveness trumps subtlety here. Without Name isn't necessarily scary, but it is so atmospheric that you almost get the feeling you're being swallowed up by those vast forests yourself. The sound design is rock solid, alienating and also uses silences at just the right moments.
Not all questions are answered in this cinematic equivalent of psychedelic music. Without Name feels somewhat unfinished and doesn't reach its full potential. Nevertheless, Finnergan treats us to an atmospheric experience that most closely resembles Jonathan Glazer's uncanny sci-fi Under the Skin (2013). Without Name is, moreover, a film that you have to experience rather than understand, a successful formal experiment for enthusiastic connoisseurs.
Translated from Dutch · View original
Collins
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- 7282 messages
- 4306 votes
Lorcan Finnegan's debut film, "Without Name," attempts to craft a gripping psychological eco-horror. He succeeds in creating an oppressive atmosphere. Through a combination of optical illusions, lighting effects, and a captivating sound design, the primeval forest where the film takes place becomes a suffocating hell.
Unfortunately, the fantastic psychedelic setting fails to satisfactorily bring the story of a troubled surveyor and his crumbling psyche to life. The film weaves a multitude of ideas into a tangled narrative web reminiscent of a colorful trip. In this tangled web of impressions and illusions, the surveyor's complex inner life is poorly reflected. Or rather, much remains unexplained.
The supernatural aspect also remains vague. Perhaps the supernatural element resonating in the psychedelic imagery is nothing more than a struggle against the surveyor's impending midlife crisis? Or perhaps he simply can't tolerate magic mushrooms? Or perhaps an ancient power resides in the primeval forest after all? We don't know.
The film is certainly atmospheric, but at one point it loses itself in a haphazard experimentation with lighting effects and strobe bombardments. The camerawork is good, and with long, sweeping takes and numerous zoom shots, it enhances the unsettling atmosphere.
The effect created by the images, sounds, and camerawork is unsettling, ominous, and unsettling. It's all beautiful. I simply missed a more earthy component in this dreamy splendor, in the form of a more solid and less permeable narrative structure. I love style, but I felt some substantial substantiation was lacking here.
Translated from Dutch · View original
sinterklaas
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- 11813 messages
- 3316 votes
After seeing Vivarium a while ago, I managed to find this debut feature film on the great internet.
I'll keep saying it: The Irish can make better films than the English, seeing as they often pull out all the stops. In this case, Without Name, like Vivarium, takes some interesting liberties with reality, even though the budget is still limited. Eric is a Dublin stay-at-home dad who leaves his family behind a few days a week to work in the Irish forests, surveying land. In the evenings, he drinks and Skypes in his cabin, or, for a change, goes to the local pub, where he meets the eccentric nomad Devoy. Meanwhile, he also leads a double life when he meets a much younger coworker and has an adulterous relationship with her.
The film is a slow burner, and it never really becomes clear what the danger lies in. Do the trees have something unnatural, or is Eric simply going mad? The hallucination scenes are also quite powerful. The atmosphere is reminiscent of Under the Skin and Noah's tactics. What perhaps let me down a bit was the lack of subtitles, which left some things a bit vague. Was that one young woman really Eric's daughter, and is there an incestuous theme here?
Otherwise a strong debut.
4.0*
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