Upstream Colour (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 Colour 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