Gaia
neonComing as the clear breakout hit of the 2021 SXSW Film Festival, Jaco Bouwer's Gaia teleports audiences into a mysterious primordial forest alongside two forest rangers who find themselves quickly at the assault of mysterious humans living in the woods and monsters who lurk in the night. Joining the modern evolution on the horror genre, which deals in tension and paranoia, Gaia falls in line with projects like In the Earth and False Positive in its thesis on building tension and horror – for better or worse.
One defining piece of this genre is its refusal to fully define reality from fantasy. Clearly drawing from successes of the past such as She-Wolf of London and The Blair Witch Project, these films, including Gaia, know that the paranoia of a threat being right around the corner can be more terrifying than any monster itself. The issue, however, is that these new films clearly want to be more than just a small psychological thriller. She-Wolf of London and The Blair Witch Project worked because they never gave a release from the tension for something truly horrifying or graphic; they created a smaller scale and defined themselves by those restrictions to great success. By including dream sequences of incredible horror, these films completely undermine the restrictions they place on themselves and the genre overall. By seeing these moments of horror, the tension of not knowing what could happen is gone alongside the effectiveness of these scenes, because even if they turn out to be real, in the moment it will assume that they are just dreams. It is frustrating and largely accomplishes nothing but hurting the feature overall, and whilst Gaia might not be the worst case of this in the world, it undeniably suffers the same fate enough to be a clear negative.
It also doesn't help that the film really can struggle to find much of a thesis. There seems to be some blending of mythology and environmentalism brewing, but ultimately the film really fails to find this deeper level. While it isn't a requirement for a successful horror film to find this, considering the amount of time the film spends building themes and how rich it presents itself, it does feel like there needed to be something more here. This could be the result of the modern flaws of the horror genre already mentioned, as it does take the focus away from what is actually happening and gives it to the debate of if anything is happening at all, now allowing the actual meat of the feature to become fully realised.
With that said, it would be simply false to claim that Gaia was a disaster. The technical elements of the film, for example, are rather incredible. Especially for being something of a lower budget, the cinematography by Jorrie van der Walt is honestly stunning at times and the makeup work is some of the year's best. Gaia wisely decides to go practical rather than CGI for the majority of moments which, when on a limited budget, really is the clear best decision. When it comes to building tension, the film also does a rather solid job. With enough body horror to freak audiences out and the natural horror of being alone in the woods at night, there are various moments throughout the film's rather clean 95-minute runtime that genuinely are anxiety-inducing and speak to the talents of the filmmakers behind the project.
Gaia may not be the best horror film to come out in recent memory but is also not the worst. Considering it is Jaco Bouwer's feature debut, there is enough here to respect and praise to make the film feel successful overall, despite its flaws. The biggest killer for Gaia is the same killer threatening the modern horror genre overall. There needs to be thought and purpose given to style, and if the style is cannibalising the substance of a film, something needs to change. It doesn't come off as smart or inventive, instead it comes off as frustrating and boring.
