Gaia

Gabi and Winston are environmentalists checking on remote wildlife cameras in the deep jungle. Gabi loses a drone to what appears to be a wild man. She goes to retrieve the drone. Instead, she finds a father, his son, and a monster of nature.

This is a fine little body horror. It starts more like a cheap Eli Roth horror. As it got more into the body, I was hoping for Cronenberg level. In the end, it's a fine indie horror that hints of something more. It touches on environmentalism, Greek tragedy, and survivalist cult but it doesn't fully satisfy. I like some of the visuals and some of the ideas. This is interesting but not all the potential gets realized.

Gaia is a weird movie. Weird but not bad. The story is easy to follow, and contains some strange creatures what gives it a little horror effect. Of course it's all fantasy, nothing to take too seriously and that's how you should watch it, with an open mind. It's a very small cast and overal they did a good job. I can't say I watched a lot of good movies from South-Africa but Gaia is certainly worth a watch. The cinematography wasn't bad at all. The languages are mostly English, but sometimes there is a little Afrikaans, which is for me who speak Dutch a nice and strange thing to hear. Strange like the whole story.

This film could of been great, it had a great idea, good effects, just not alot happened, a few to many 'dream like' scenes that went on for to long, i feel like they tried to hard to not be a standard, lost in the woods/creature horror film.

Its obviously good to try something diffrent but i think this film would of been better if it just embraced what it was.

I'm not familiar with the video game so many referred to, so I liked the special effects for the monsters. It was very slow, so that was a negative. The main actress is obviously a new face, but I thought she did a great job and she is very beautiful. I loved the claustrophobic feeling from the ratio used in the cinematography. That forest is beautiful, but I DON'T have any urge to go traipsing thru it. LOL I found the main character to be quite selfish to the cost of others. Overall if you have patience, I think it's worth a 1 time watch. ;D.

I found comparisons with the movie Annihilation. I enjoyed for my part-my husband fell asleep.