Reality and fantasy, representation and metaphor, modernity and classicism, decipherment and horror, various genre elements that were originally divided into two are gradually integrated in the use of skillful montage and in the astonishingly detailed and surprisingly arranged scenes. The intertextual collision brings the audience a highly compelling psychological thriller that is dreamlike and illusory, and the true and false are difficult to distinguish.
This amazing film is Gore Wibinski's "Lifesaving Antidote".
Gore Wibinski, the low-key and pragmatic director, has successfully moved from a commercial director to the film industry.
He is good at many types of film themes. He was born in commercials, giving him a very detailed scene construction ability. The use of metaphors and symbolic elements in the scene is his specialty.
At the same time, his experience in filming commercials allowed him to grasp the commercial and artistic balance of the film.
The box office bomb, the "Pirates of the Caribbean" trilogy, were all created by him, and the series has a staggering $3 billion in box office worldwide.
The stories and images of pirates have become Hollywood's new cultural totem and golden weapon.
The low-key Gore Wibinski pays much attention to family. Apart from filming, he is to accompany his family. This allows his films to always take care of reality and not completely float in the air.
For example, the "Weatherman" that many fans like about the life crisis of adults is also from him.
When it comes to horror movies, he also plays well.
The American movie of the same name adapted from the famous Japanese horror series "Midnight Ring", after his Westernization, set off a Hollywood gold craze for remakes of Asian horror films.
Gore Wibinski is good at using the symbolic metaphors of the scene to render the atmosphere, and at the same time constructing a highly symbolic closed system as a metaphor for society.
"Life-Saving Antidote" is almost a concentrated presentation of the characteristics of his filming. He included all his specialties in this cavitation film at once.
At the beginning of the story, it showed me a chaotic, dirty, and busy modern American city. Lockhart, the young Wall Street executive, is involved in a corporate shock.
The president in charge of the large-scale merger went to a mysterious sanatorium in the Alps for training. At the most urgent moment of the merger, he suddenly announced that he would no longer care about everything about the company.
While threatening Lockhart's taint, the company's executives asked him to personally go to the nursing home to pick up the president. If he is unable to complete the task, he will report his financial taint to the relevant agency.
Lockhart can only run 4,000 kilometers from the United States by plane, train, and car, all the way to this closed castle sanatorium standing at the foot of the Alps and on the top of the town.
Lockhart initially thought that 20 minutes would solve everything, but he was wrong.
The darkness is devouring him, and he will be caught in an unbelievably terrifying encounter.
This seemingly bright, harmonious, and smart-smiling nursing home hides many untold secrets.
Lockhart was looking for the president and protecting his self-interest. He stepped into the dark secrets of the nursing home. The closer he got to the president, the closer he got to the horrible truth that had been hidden for a hundred years.
The patients in the sanatorium are all upper-class operators in the society, and they are among the best in various fields. After they had nowhere to go, they sought the "antidote" of life here, but instead they were used by the nursing home.
In the sanatorium, the doctor with absolute authority in the local area is a mystery, and he has control and power that is not irritating.
Hannah, the girl who grew up in isolation in a fairy tale, is also suspicious.
Lockhart can only find the truth in this unknown world alone, protect himself, and escape.
In the genre, "Life-Saving Antidote" can be said to have the narrative style of "Bounded Island" in metaphysics, and the atmosphere of "The Shining" in God.
When the protagonist of the film takes a train through a long dark tunnel, it is announced that the story and the protagonist have entered a world of fantasy.
That sanatorium was the place where this nightmare happened, closed, grotesque, glamorous on the surface, and rotten inside.
The water source there is added with dizziness and hallucination drugs. There is a crisis hidden under all the beauty here.
People who come here are told that they are sick, and the dean's treatment is "purification."
Lockhart was forced to stay because he was injured in a car accident. He absolutely did not believe that he was sick, but under the constant suggestion of the dean, under the control of drugs, and under coercion and coercion, he finally admitted that he was sick!
In the suspense of "Illness", the story of "Life-Saving Antidote" is similar to that of "Closed Island".
Lockhart came from a metropolis filled with interests, and was drained by his busy desires. This sanatorium is just the opposite of that city.
The dean’s reason is to purify his city disease through various treatments.
But according to modern people's point of view, Lockhart is indeed difficult to convince himself that he is sick, but looking at the relaxed patients, whether everything is reasonable.
The kind of insecurity that is unclear, and always feels strange, has firmly captured the hearts of the audience in the narrative.
In the second half of the film, the suspense began to be solved slowly, but before the climax, the final mystery was never solved, and the suspense and success remained at the last moment.
In the metaphorical presentation of illness, there are a large number of psychological symbolic constructions, the kind of "shining"-like subtext construction.
For example, the metaphor about water.
The dean constantly emphasized the importance of drinking water, constantly emphasized the health of the sanatorium's water source, and constantly persuaded Lockhart to drink water.
His purification treatment is also closely related to water. Most of the human body is water, so the key to purification is to filter the water in the human body.
So we saw Lockhart being put into a closed cylinder to meditate.
At this time, his life nightmare, in the heavy rain, because of the financial crisis, the death process of his father who jumped from the bridge and fell into the sea kept flashing.
The water began to become full of murderous aura.
At the same time, the symbolic metaphor and frequency of the eel has continued to increase.
Eels and water, from the initial visual threats to the later behavioral threats, until they become the horrible things that can take the life of the male protagonist.
Whether it's water or eel, Lockhart appeared in the beginning when he was hallucinating because of drugs. The escalating aggressiveness and lethality made the story atmosphere escalate, conflicts increased, and the atmosphere of terror skyrocketed.
These two symbolic foods are constantly being poured into the audience's consciousness. The director uses the story to create a sense of insecurity, so that the audience is suffocated in suspense, revealing weaknesses and wounds, and then the director easily takes the water and the eel with a sense of horror. Poured into.
Put fear into your consciousness, this is the most advanced horror film.
"Life-Saving Antidote" is definitely not the kind of purely sound visual horror film that is shocking, but plays with the spirit of the audience, weakens your rationality, and makes you drown in the director's construction among a large number of metaphorical symbols. The sea of sensual fear.
In the story, there are legends from a hundred years ago, grooming techniques, plus the elixir obtained by squeezing human oil, plus the inbreeding of the nobles in order to maintain the purity of the blood.
Morality is corrupted in science, and human nature is distorted in power.
Fat guy said from the beginning that Gore Wibinski's films always have the magic of caring about reality. The castle in "Lifesaving Antidote", the purification treatment in the nursing home, the doctors, the police, and the patients are all metaphorical.
It is no exaggeration that this sanatorium enclosed in a beautiful environment is a condensed reality society.
Here is to turn the disease-free people in the real society into serious diseases.
The job of a doctor is to make people sick and make people believe that they are sick.
For the sake of profit, the police will pick up the awakened people like the hero.
The so-called purification is nothing but poisoning.
This castle-like sanatorium is a place where power is manifested in capitals.
Power is impenetrable and no obvious traces can be seen. We are like patients in the castle, thinking that we are receiving treatment and thinking that we will get better and better. As a result, we are only squeezed out step by step by the exerciser of power.
The human oil squeezed out is the antidote to maintain the interests of the class and maintain the society to continue to operate in accordance with the will of the powers!
The phrase "you are sick" from a powerful person is a kind of discourse violence under the control of power.
The scariest scene in the film came from Lockhart's screaming after seeing the truth. As a result, no one believed him. They absolutely were sick and wanted to hold Lockhart's mouth.
Their sick spiritual sustenance allows them to continue living here. They have no doubt about this, or selective forgetting.
While they are being squeezed out and refined, they still feel that they are really receiving purification treatment, and they will be restored to health.
The disease and health here are nothing more than the violence of language symbols. He declares which class you belong to, and then makes you automatically act in accordance with its rules and regulations.
The entire sanatorium is the control institution of power, and regardless of class, people from the so-called upper class to ordinary people are subject to the discipline and punishment of power.
At the end of the film, the male protagonist shows a weird smile. Has he found the cure? Or is it just another chronic poison?
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