A man wakes up in a dark cavern, buried in mud. Aside from a nearby corpse, he has nothing -- no clothes, no memory, and a humanness that's only rudimentary. As he crawls out, the cavern turns out to be a sub-sub-basement of a decaying, underground corporate/industrial complex punctured by strange roots. Thus begins the man's journey: a multiple quest to find out where he is, who he is, and what his purpose might be. None of this is made easier by the fact that he's being hunted down by savage mutants and armed security troops.

As the undaunted protagonist (played with grim intensity by Clovis Cornillac) climbs his way up through the labyrinthine facility, encountering other unusual characters along the way, fragmented records and technological ruins hint at a recent, horrifying disaster... or a visionary hope for the future. And as the man struggles to survive while penetrating closer and closer to the center of a deadly energy scandal, he begins to discover the role he himself has been playing in the world he's now lost in.

Franck Vestiel's big-screen directorial and screenwriting debut, Eden Log can be categorized as French avant-garde sci-horror. But calling it that would be too limiting; it is a dark psychomentary, an environmental diatribe, a harrowing study of what it means to be human, and perhaps cinema's first Gnostic zombie movie.

Adding to the tradition of such classics as Halperin's White Zombie, Gilling's Plague of the Zombies, and Romero's Land of the Dead, these (pseudo-)zombies are bestial, diseased mutations of an abused lower class, lashing out mindlessly at a world that's pushed them to the bottom. They're not undead, but they are ugly, invasive, and truly menacing... although their humanity is only marginally less apparent than that of the armored corporate guards. As the two groups spread through the complex, their conflict with each other takes on a powerful socioeconomic significance, as well as psychological implications for the man who finds himself caught between them while struggling to recover his own humanity.

No one subtext should be necessary to appreciate Eden Log, however. The film is emotionally gripping and aesthetically unsettling, often even eerily beautiful. As a horror film, it relies more on pervasive atmosphere and disorienting visuals and sense of space than on violence, but the mutants and troopers help keep up the action. The soundscape-like score is haunting, and the sets fluctuate between Terry Gilliam, H. R. Giger, and recovered junk. The effect is surreal and darkly dreamlike, but the minimal color palette and intense textures infuse Eden Log with a grittiness that is anything but fantasy. In pacing as in style, the film recalls Lynch's Eraserhead, Tarkovsky's Stalker, and Tsukamoto's Tetsuo movies. Like those films, as well, Eden Log is a highly unique vision, with form and meaning that dovetail into something weirder and more powerful than your standard sci-horror flick.

As you might have guessed from the above comparisons, Eden Log demands patience; I expect some viewers may become frustrated or bored. The plot unfolds slowly, the dialogue is sparse, and some points remain ambiguous to the end. Along the way, the viewer is given only as much information as the bewildered protagonist has, and is forced into similar sensory perception -- with all its chaos, gaps, and shock. Neither the protagonist nor the viewer necessarily knows what they're looking at, what lies in the darkness beyond the motley walls, or why those walls are even there. It is masterful filmmaking that can create such an absorbing -- if disquieting -- experience for the audience.

With additional layers of meaning emerging at each new level the protagonist climbs to, there are as many subtexts in the film as you wish to find in it. Whether you choose to analyze them or just sit back and enjoy the nightmare, Eden Log is a conceptual and experiential masterpiece.

Other Thoughts:
Without going into detail or risking spoilers, I'll opine that the Gnostic dimensions of Eden Log make The Matrix seem like a nursery rhyme; I can't think of a film this evocative of Gnostic concepts and mysticism (while offering plenty of new twists) since Eraserhead. The movie directly relates the protagonist to Adam of the book of Genesis, and characters that suggest such scriptural figures as a crucified Christ and an embittered Sophia are signposts in what unfolds as an arduous and confounding spiritual journey. With this man representing Man, trapped between the earthly and the divine, his struggle to uncover his own essence -- with difficult steps through nature, language, science/technology, and ambivalent relations with Woman -- has universal import.

Review Rating: 9 out of 10 funky elevators.