Review: Jaco Bouwer’s Gaia Artfully, If Cruelly, Conjures Mother Nature’s Wrath

After a while, the film’s elaborate, often breathtaking special effects come to feel like it’s only source of complexity.

Gaia
Photo: Decal

Plot is thin and perfunctory in South African director Jaco Bouwer’s eco-horror film Gaia. A forest ranger, Gabi (Monique Rockman), becomes injured on the job and is nursed back to health by a pair of mysterious survivalists, Barend (Carel Nel) and his son Stefan (Alex van Dyk), living in the dense woods. But Gabi soon falls victim to the pair’s dangerous devotion to a supernatural force that exists within the forest.

Throughout, it feels as if Bouwer is simply using this lightweight setup as an excuse to display all manner of elaborate, often breathtaking special effects. Showing admiral restraint with CGI, the film employs an array of techniques, including manipulated footage of natural phenomena and creature makeup effects reminiscent of Guillermo del Toro’s work, to suggest nature as a source of simultaneous beauty and fear. But after a while, these effects come to feel like mere affectation, as well as this rather aloof film’s only source of complexity.

Amid the belabored hokum concerning the mythology behind Barend and Stefan’s belief system and, in what tests the limits of plausibility, a contrived romance between Gabi and the illiterate, brainwashed Stefan, the film teases an intriguing ideological battle. Gabi and Barend, as representatives of civilization and nature, respectively, match wits, but Bouwer simplistically frames their arguments. The filmmaker only halfheartedly acknowledges the sublime or life-affirming qualities of civilization and nature, opting instead to portray them as mostly sinister entities, and as reflections of the crazed Barend’s overbearing cynicism.

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In Gaia, civilization is little more than a corrupting force, while nature is a patient yet unforgiving annihilator that will eventually win out over civilization due to the hubris of humans thinking that they can dominate the world. And in validating this worldview, the film takes on a quiet cruelty: Gabi slowly suffers from a crippling and fantastical malady—which features such symptoms as plant buds sprouting from the skin—that’s essentially a cynical punishment for her and all she represents. You can bet Bouwer never shortchanges on the stunning visuals for this punishment, but it’s a cruel one nonetheless.

Score: 
 Cast: Monique Rockman, Carel Nel, Alex van Dyk, Anthony Oseyemi  Director: Jaco Bouwer  Screenwriter: Tertius Kapp  Distributor: Decal  Running Time: Decal min  Rating: R  Year: 2021

Wes Greene

Wes Greene is a film writer based out of Philadelphia.

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