When five minutes into a movie a man is stabbed, flayed, and eviscerated, then his entrails displayed on a ceiling fan like a macabre art installation, you know you’re in for a wild time. And Ghost in the Cell, the latest from Joko Anwar (Satan’s Slaves, Impetigore), does not let you down on that front. This is a blackly comic prison horror and an acerbic critique of government and corporate corruption, all coated in a thick layer of glistening viscera. Seriously, at one point a man is torn asunder and turned into a shower. (You really have to see it for it to make sense.)
Warnings about new and emerging technology run amok has been a common theme in movies since damn near day one. From Frankenstein to Wells to the Terminator franchise, we’ve been counseled against the hazards of unchecked science we don’t fully grasp yet. With his debut feature, Appofeniacs, prolific music video director Chris Marrs Piliero uses a post-Pulp Fiction maze of rapid banter and intersecting narratives to raise a cautious eyebrow at the use of AI and deepfakes. What lands, lands solid, especially the frequent and ample violence, but what misses whiffs, and the mixed bag of a film winds up mostly a cautionary tale about aggrieved edgelords with no real problems and too much time on their hands.
