The premise of this film is startling: Imagine a place where everything abandoned and forgotten, all the thrown-away toys and the unwritten books, the unfulfilled plans, the dead and the unborn are still somehow present. This is a premise that easily attracts all kinds of stories and images, emotions and philosophical ruminations. What would you find in the Re-Cycle? What would you seek, and what would you come across that you were not thinking about? It is quite hard to make a totally bad film from this premise.
And "Re-Cycle" is not a totally bad film. It just misses most opportunities the premise offers. The Pang Brothers decided to film it as a mixture of horror and computer game, and the good stuff is struggling under the load of annoying genre conventions. It is sad to watch when the heroine has to solve some superfluous task ("Cross the bridge without breathing, or the dead will chase you"), when there is so much more interesting and meaningful that could happen instead. How else could you turn a person's inner self into a series a landscapes? Also, the relation with the little girl never gains the substance it needs to make the ending convincing. Sure, there is some amazing imagery here, and some of it even makes sense. But the film left me longing for a remake by somebody who handles both the imagery and the complexity of the idea.
By the way, if you feel the same, check out "After Life" by Hirokazu Kore-Eda. It is very low-key visually, but explores a similarly striking idea in great depth and with great humanity.
And "Re-Cycle" is not a totally bad film. It just misses most opportunities the premise offers. The Pang Brothers decided to film it as a mixture of horror and computer game, and the good stuff is struggling under the load of annoying genre conventions. It is sad to watch when the heroine has to solve some superfluous task ("Cross the bridge without breathing, or the dead will chase you"), when there is so much more interesting and meaningful that could happen instead. How else could you turn a person's inner self into a series a landscapes? Also, the relation with the little girl never gains the substance it needs to make the ending convincing. Sure, there is some amazing imagery here, and some of it even makes sense. But the film left me longing for a remake by somebody who handles both the imagery and the complexity of the idea.
By the way, if you feel the same, check out "After Life" by Hirokazu Kore-Eda. It is very low-key visually, but explores a similarly striking idea in great depth and with great humanity.