Aaaaaaaagh! (2015)

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Director: Steve Oram

Screenplay: Steve Oram

Cast: Denise (Lucy Honigman); Barabara (Toyah Willcox); Smith (Steve Oram); Keith (Tom Meeten); Og (Sean Reynard); Ryan (Julian Rhind-Tutt); Jupiter (Julian Barratt)

Synopsis: In an alternative England, human beings are not that different from primates, communicating in grunts, and interacting in crude and even violent ways even when videogames and television still exist. One named Smith (Steve Oram), mourning the loss of his mate, travels with his friend Keith (Tom Meeten) to the territory of Ryan (Julian Rhind-Tutt). Ryan, with the help of Og (Sean Reynard), became the new alpha-male of a home with an older woman Barabara (singer Toyah Willcox) and her daughter Denise (Lucy Honigman), not impressed when Smith and Keith start to make themselves known. The original alpha-male of the territory, Jupiter (Julian Barratt), lays in an improvised den nearby, cherishing his beloved Battenberg cake in misery of his lot.

I admit, if it becomes my spiritual bias from my part, that my opinion on this is entirely my own opinion, but if human beings did "devolve" back to a primitive state, I seriously doubt we would return back to beasts. For me, the best of humanity feels out of place even from evolution. And also the worst of humanity feels alien even next to nature. In fact even the stupidity of mankind feels alien to nature, no other animal as strange as we. Even our fore-apes would have not been as bizarre as we can be. Steve Oram, actor and here director/star/writer, depicts probably a far more credible example of what would happen if mankind devolved in that, somehow, we would still be able to fix a broken washing machine but we eat meat raw, attempt to shag people randomly and piss up other peoples' refrigerators to mark territory. Frankly  a lot of this people would get away with now if they had the chance.

Aaaaaaaagh! is surreal black comedy, intentionally absurd and with a premise where,  even if it does have its own internal coherence , logic has to go out the window to appreciate it. One of the best virtues of the film is that it reflects human behaviour out its strangest would stand out even when the cast act like the casts of 2001: A Space Odyssey's prologue. It is also the film where Noel Fielding of The Mighty Boosh and The Great British Bakeoff gets his penis bitten off, so every base should be covered. A low budget film, Aaaaaaaagh! willingly shifts between the peculiar and the transgressive, but helping with this is that it had to be filmed within real environments including an ordinary city home making up a huge amount of the production value. The paradox of depicting mankind as primitives but shot in ordinary locations interacting with kitchen appliances and flat screen televisions is as much part of the humour. It also emphasises that this pretty much strips away its characters' emotions to their most vulgar even if the film did not have a script built around a grunted language. The kind of acts that are absurd to witness, like defecating on Clingfilm on the floor, but are things that you could imagine people would actually do and think about yourself actually doing if you were pushed into that direction.

So that means that, even if physically it would be difficult to rip a man's whole arm off with just physical strength, the violence behind it is a facsimile of violent you witness it real life. Like the sex as well, reduced to clothed dry humping with a lot of emphasis on ineffectual useless males. Fittingly as a plot, you could squint and realise this type of plot could have easily played out for a kitchen sink melodrama. Ryan the drug dealer having taking up a relationship with the older wife Barabara, the husband left out on the street whilst Smith plays the potential love interest for fellow member of the household Denise. That it is told in an extreme and over-the-top manner just provides a stranger and more fascinating edge in how this type of real life conflict could play out.

Helping the film is its score, significantly tied to this film as Wilcox's real life husband is Robert Fripp, the legendary guitarist and sole figure who has been in all formations of King Crimson, a legendary progressive rock band. The music comes from the King Crimson ProjeKcts albums, provided in respect to his wife starring in Aaaaaaaagh!, and in lieu of it not being originally composed for the film it is chosen perfectly nonetheless. Even if some of the synthesizers might be ridiculous, as is expected from as talented a musician as Fripp the score is dynamic and the kind a low budget production like this it should be grateful for. All because of the pure chance of their casting, particularly when it comes to the heavier material, a score here that lifts to material up as well in quality when sadly a lot of low budget films, and especially those of even lower budgets than this one without known actors helming them, can struggle at times acquiring memorable music to place over the scenes.

Is Aaaaaaaagh! actually "abstract" though? That is a question that can be lost in amongst the praise to the music and the humour of the film, especially as that is the reason the film is being reviewed in the first place. The answer? No. The irony is that, within ordinary English streets and homes, the film structurally by accidentally (or purposely) comes off as a pastiche of drama which just happens to be cast with ape-people who pee, fornicate and mutilate each other. With the potential to easily be turned into a really provocative stage play, the scenario is very normal in tone despite the strangeness of the material. The strangeness is entirely what the cast do and how they behave, not the structure of the film itself. The only thing remotely close to the alienating mood of the abstract is a brief animation repeated over and over of a chicken, with the most basic of stop motion and quirky music I secretly hope was also composed by Robert Fripp.

Aaaaaaaagh! is weird though. The willingness to brake taboos is thankfully tempered by the generally farcical tone, so that it does not become merely a string of obscenities but more perversely funny. And that does not take away from the sudden bleakness which surprises me with the picture's ending, ultimately proof the film is also good when it does not remove complex human emotions through the premise. Said ending, in which the sense of betrayal triggers an act of violence which undercuts the generally funny tone, does sober the viewer and that reveals a virtue of Oram's picture that might be intentional or not. That, whilst drawing from the dark sense of humour found in British comedy like Chris Morris' Jam (2000), this is a return to my original point that even if people were to act like this they would not merely regress into apes, the psychological baggage depicted in Aaaaaaaagh! complicating social interaction and behaviour unlike with animals. Merely a subjective opinion but a large part of Aaaaaaaagh!'s humour which can be agreed on is that, by dropping these characters into ordinary environments, it is not that strange to imagine people acting this way outside the film if they could get away with it.

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Personal Opinion:

Definitely a great example of the current decade's slew of unconventional cinematic oddities, the type that are one-offs and appeal to cult film fans from the off-set and/or appear at festivals like this did at FrightFest. Not outstaying its welcome at less than eighty minutes, when the premise could have dragged on, Aaaaaaaagh! is memorable with intelligence behind it.

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