Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

American independent cinema sometimes suffers from a particular affliction not found elsewhere: a counter-reaction against a mainstream which is so facile and crude that doing anything which is the polar opposite of that seems meritorious. This is not a happy situation, and Upstream Color is an awful film, less watchable than a Transformers sequel. Having no confidence in its premise, which is a confused woman being robbed after having been injected with a parasite and then ending up in a relationship with a confused man, it chops up the scenes, brings in completely unexplained characters and goes around in circles which seem to imply people being tied into the psyches of pigs on a farm. It almost makes you cry at times at its utter cluelessness, because somewhere below you can actually hear the director trying to say something of substance, but no one is helping his one-man-band.

2/10