‘Surgery is the new sex’ was the suggestive tagline of veteran filmmaker David Cronenberg’s recent body-horror piece Crimes of the Future and this appears to have inspired the latest work from Angolan-Portuguese writer and director, Carlos Conceição. His third feature and notably his English-language debut, Bodyhackers follows Renée Welles (Joana Ribeiro), a former ballerina who becomes obsessed with surgical procedures. After a consultation at a suspiciously dystopian clinic, she meets environmental activist Denver Blake (McCaul Lombardi) who is investigating the dangerous toxins used in their treatments, and the pair embark on an unusual relationship.
With a background in crafting music videos, the director has a keen eye for impactful design and this piece is shot in a slick noir-esque style. The mysterious opening act makes neat use of distorted reflections of characters’ faces, foreshadowing the warped darkness ahead. Issues arise from the script as the sci-fi narrative begins to resemble a series of moments crudely stitched together rather than making for a cohesive plot. These sequences often involve graphic imagery of surgeries or post-op patients impulsively giving into lust around one another. The film opts for shock value over storytelling and it’s unclear if the humour, particularly born from the protagonist Denver Blake, is always intentional. In one of many bizarre scenes having come a cropper on horseback to go under the knife himself, he comically confesses that he “learned the hard way not to go riding at night”.
Despite the artistic aesthetic and striking presence of leading star Joana Ribeiro, the sinister story of Bodyhackers is far too underdeveloped to work as a feature film. Efforts within the body-horror subgenre, especially with these themes, are nearly always compared to that of Cronenberg and with weak characterisation and wooden acting, this pastiche very quickly slips into a botch-job parody that should be on the waiting list for a screenplay transplant.
Cinema Perspective 