Plot:
Things are not easy for Roachfar, an old man suffering from the horrible Cerritosis disease: an uncurable disease that slowly eats at your mind. Roachfar is haunted by a strange world inhabited by even stranger creatures, and his condition is growing worse and worse.
Our thoughts:
The very first thing you notice about "Roachfar" is the visual style. It hits you already in the intro, which is a mesmerizing piece of visual effect art in itself. It tells us the backstory of our main character, Roachfar, and his disease: Cerritosis. It's hard to figure out where the movie will go after this, and it makes you wonder if the movie will be a visual experiment or actually give us a good narrative?
The answer is that it does both. The story is a setup for a lot of experimentation and surreal images. The movie is about Roachfar, a man suffering from Cerritosis. This disease grows more severe the longer you have it, and basically ends up giving you hallucinations, paranoia and schizophrenia, to name a few things. Roachfar is far too gone, and after being visited by a "Mr. Smith", he is thrown into nightmare after nightmare where he meets the most deranged and surreal creatures.
As you might understand, the plot is really working as the canvas for the filmmakers to mess around with visual effects and surrealism. It's a story, but who cares that it doesn't go very far? It's not about that, clearly. With an actor who is great at playing disoriented, but not as great at other things, the movie really needs to be grabbing us with its creativity and experimentation. So does it?
Yes and no. I am not a huge fan of visual effects overall, but "Roachfar" uses in the way where you are supposed to know it's digital effects. Unlike CGI effects in most movies, it's not the case of trying to hide it, but rather using it to make everything seem even more weird. It's not terrible, but also not what I prefer. But beyond personal preference, "Roachfar" is an interesting little piece that shows a few of many crazy ideas that Steven Cerritos carries in his head, and I am sure we will be seeing plenty more of that in the future. |
