Great visuals and a weighty presentation cannot make up for the total lack of a story outside of Gaia's one note message. There are the building blocks of something great here, but with no narrative to glue it all together. Carel Nel's rant on modern life echoes those of Willem Defoe in The Lighthouse. Barend and Stefan's situation shows shades of Deliverance. Cinematography of the lush yet frightening flora triggers memories of Midsommar. The monster design is almost lawsuit worthy with how much it pulls from The Last of Us, but the practical effects on display are a welcome change of pace to the CG plastered scenes of its peers. It just needed that final layer to bring it all together. That's not to say Gaia is a bad movie, far from it, but what it leaves on the table almost outweighs the final product we were given. Fans of slow burns, eco-horror and gore will be satiated, just don't look for a deeper meaning behind the shallow, albeit gorgeous outer layer.

Really dig this one. Not as good as I wanted this to be but I still end up liking it. There is so much to admire in this film. It's beautiful and thought-provoking nature horror with some body horror, disturbing dread and strong cinematography. A park ranger finds a father and a son living in a remote area of the forest for years, worshipping a giant tree. Some of the story telling is muddled but it succeeds in captivating the audience with its setting. The visuals are just excellent especially the dream sequences and the very limited cast helps showcasing how scary nature is. The performances are really good and the "post-human being" design is the one of the coolest things I've seen this year.

[Sitges FF] A mix between body horror, eco-terror and religious iconography, which warns of the consequences of infectious human existence. Barend/Moses creates a cult around a mushroom/God who is cruel and murderous, but survivable through faith. It works as an hallucinogenic experience, benefited by an excellent sound design, which has good ideas especially in the description of this isolated micro-society.

Loved this. The message is obvious but not too in-your-face, and the body horror aspects are amazing. Visually, the movie is stunning and I found the characters really engaging as well. I liked how it never necessarily spelled things out for you regarding the 'truth' of the entity and fungus.

A forest ranger doing her rounds runs into some trouble in this psychedelic environmentalist horror movie about mushrooms. As her colleague tells her, at the start, “You’re just like the whiteys: ‘Danger? Where? Let’s go look at it!’” Strange creatures, hallucinations, religious mania etc follow.