2003’s Octane was a curious co-production between the UK and Luxembourg, which also does a fairly decent job of standing in for the US. Directed by Marcus Adamas, whose Long Time Dead (2001) was a flashy, vacuous, but competent Oujii Board thriller, this borrows heavily from the likes of The Lost Boys, The Vanishing, Near Dark and The Hitcher. And it’s not at all bad, especially for the first hour or so, at which point it veers into a rather forgettable climax.
Madeleine Stowe stars as Senga, who’s driving her irritating teenage daughter, Nat (Mischa Barton) home after visiting her ex-husband. As it goes on, however, the journey becomes increasingly strange: a weird couple seem to be following them (when not being glimpsed having a picnic next to a recent car crash), a punchable hitchiker they pick up talks about ‘finding herself in India’ and then disappears, a sinister recovery man (Norman Reedus) seems to be following them and a TV preacher at a service station seems to be talking directly to Senga. Is she going mad? Well, her mental wellbeing certainly isn’t being helped by the amount of amphetamines she’s knocking back but, when Nat goes missing, it seems as though something more sinister may be afoot.
It eventually turns out that it’s all down to a strange cult led by ‘the Father’ (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), populated by misfits and outcasts, who travel up and down the highways draining the blood from any unfortunate car crash victims they happen to come across (or run off the road). And they’re intending to initiate Nat as their newest member.
As mentioned, this starts off pretty well, and the road sequences are very effective, with a slowly building sense of atmosphere that really captures the inherent strangeness of the transient milieu. Unfortunately, once the action relocates to an – upmarket car factory? Sale room? God knows? – it becomes an altogether more standard action pic. It’s possibly not surprising that this downturn coincides with the appearence of Rhys Meyers, who’s unquestionnably a striking looking fellow, but who’s performances have a kind of glacial posiness that’s rather distracting. In fact, the bizarre, David Lynch-style couple (Amber Batty, who appeared in a few epsiodes of Wire in the Blood, and Gary Parker, who looks a little like Crispin Glover) are far more sinister.
Still, it’s not at all bad, and certainly indicates that Adams could do something rather interesting with a decent script (he went on to make the Wesley Snipes vehicle The Marksman (05), which was shot in Romania). It’s refreshing that not too much is made out of the Vampire angle – that the cult members are actually vampires is implied, but far from certain – as I’m growing rather bored with the current pseudo-goth preoccupation with them, and Madeleine Stowe puts in a suitably brittle performance.
Writer Stephen Volk’s contributed to a number of curious scripts, including Ken Russell’s Gothic (86), William Freidkin’s The Guardian (90) and the upcoming Telepathy (due for 2008). Kudos also to cinematographer Robin Vidgeon (who shot Hellraiser way back in 1987) and Orbital, who contribute a really quite good soundtrack.
Here’s a quick interview with Marcus Adams, who was apparently a member of 80s nu-beat group Meat Beat Manifesto!
