My guess is that Irish director Billy O'Brien grew up loving his horror films, his 'Alien' and his 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' in particular and there's even a little bit of Frankenstein in there for good measure. These films, and a few others, pop up a couple of times in Isolation, a horror film that is fairly self-explained by its title, and is actually the bane of the piece. Like fellow contemporary horror director Eli Roth, with his Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes inspired Cabin Fever and Hostel films, O'Brien has created something that does the job to a degree but is distinctly average throughout, providing little in the way of originality and quite a bit in the splatter column but not necessarily being anything brilliant overall.
I mean, it isn't anything special. It's a horror film with all the typical foundations of a horror film that draws on a lot of previous texts and ideas and a lot of those previous ideas have been done really, really well in much better films. Here, the filmmakers have got a muddy and dank look out of the director of photography but in terms of original story or ideas, they're running on empty. The idea behind several people being trapped in a location is nothing new apart from the fact it's a farm, something that perhaps hasn't been used before. The idea that the anti-human component of the piece is some sort of wired, mutating creature has been done and the film's overall catalyst distinctly reminded me of Frankenstein, as I mentioned.
But maybe that's the point, maybe its supposed to be some sort of statement on animal testing or cloning or whatever but it really just ends up as being a bit of a splatter-fest and not a particularly scary one at that. This is due to the majority of the splatter content being reduced to the executing of farmyard animals, those certain scenes actually feel relatively out of place and distracting from the real horror-come-splatter we're all supposed to be here for.
The film sees John, played by a Romanian actor named Marcel Iures who around about the time had been getting an increased amount of Western attention with the likes of Layer Cake, Goal! and The Cave either already on or on the brink of making his C.V. The fact he's a deranged Eastern European doctor and the casting of a Romanian actor gives us an odd but balanced feel of both Frankenstein and Dracula in equal measure. John is using a farm in Ireland run by Dan (Lynch), who has two squatters in a caravan placed just outside his entrance, they are Jaime (Harris) and Mary (Negga) and they're on the run from someone.
The film's intentions and ideas are all firmly placed in the right areas. The establishment of two separate groups of people that will eventually come together is an interesting one, one that I'm sure draws on inspiration from something like Assault on Presinct 13 but with a lot less antagonism. There are some ideas and scenes that work, but feel as if they should have worked better. The incident during which someone visits Dan's farm looking for the two stowaways with one of them in close proximity is a threat from outside the boundaries of the farm that isn't of the anti-human component and yet could spell disaster for certain characters. The scene is tense enough and acts as a precursor to the ideas and situations the character will find themselves in: feet away from being caught, and that's something you really don't want to happen.
But it's incredible how long the film takes in the setting up of the predicament. There is a lot of talk and establishing that there's something wrong with the cows and the experiment may have gone wrong and we're all supposed to ask each other "Oh, I wonder what terrible, terrible things lurk within" but the on-screen build up of something very much off-screen wears a little thin, not because you want the film to cut to the gore which is a silly mindset to have during any film, but because it just gets repetitive. There is a lot of head scratching and explaining to the audience as to what is going on and what all these experiments and scientific things mean and before too long, wouldn't you know it: it just becomes Alien on an Irish farm. Pure and simple.
There is a scene nearer the end in which the now lead role, who echoes Ripley in both gender and transition into said role, crawls around under the floor amidst some grates as the monster stalks her. It is very reminiscent of the scene in Alien during which the hapless crew member scurries around in the vent shaft with a flamethrower to defend themselves whilst the rest watch on via a radar. When we actually get to see the creature, it is a rather disappointing mess of skin and ooze sort of a GCSE papier-mâché piece submitted for the teacher's cruel assessment. There is no long, slimy tail slithering down from the ceiling in a massive cargo bay as another hapless crew member searches for a lost cat; it's just a mess of eyes, limbs and a couple of bones stuck on for good measure. The film was direct to DVD in America and Italy amongst many other nations, I'm sure. It isn't of that low level, but the film certainly isn't anything to shout about.
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