okpilak

Set in Finland, the family has a strong willed mother, a former figure skater who didn't make it, living out her dreams through her young daughter Tinja, who is a budding gymnast, but below the caliber to make it. Her mother has a Vblog, and presents an idealized family to her followers. Everything has to be perfect. One day, a bird flies into the room and objects start to break as the bird flies round. Tinja manages to capture the bird in a blanket, and her mother tells her to give her the bird, and she snaps its neck. Tinja later finds the bird, still alive in the forest, and kills the bird, but finds an egg, and brings it to her bedroom. The egg gets bigger, and Tinja can hear a heart beat. It hatches, into a very large, ugly bird but makes a bond with Tinja. They seem linked together, and things that Tinja gets made about is to receive a nasty reckoning from the bird. And the bird is evolving. I don't want to spoil things, but to say it is just beginning to get strange and in a way ominous. Certainly different.

I don't recall if I ever saw it when it came out, but I now decided to give it a try. It really is a product of its times. Coming out in 1976, three years after Soylent Green, which I do remember. Both with the idea that one only lived a set number of years, and were never heard from again. Here, when one turned 30, the gem on your hand blinked, and one went through 'renewal' or became a runner. And the runner would try to reach Sanctuary, or be shot by the Sandmen, whose job was to track down and kill runners. It is really the Logan and Jessica story. Logan is a Sandman and Jessica seems to know about Sanctuary. Logan is given the task of finding Sanctuary, as there are apparently over 1500 runners not accounted for. And this is his journey. The main set of inside the domes, where everyone lives, are miniatures, which clearly involved a lot of time and detail, which would be done in minutes by CGI now. It is really a pretty silly movie now so it really is a product of the times it was made. But it certainly was no B-Movie for its time.

I saw this a long time ago, and recently, it was listed as a movie from the 1990's that deserved a re-make with cutting edge effects and perhaps a better script. The cast certainly is talented, and the effects are quite good. But the movie falls apart as it progresses. Perhaps tighter editing, or something, but it just didn't have it. It might deserve a higher rating if this was 1998, when it was released. It touches on a number of very interesting things so it is worth a viewing.