I recently found a site called ScriptShadow and they have a list of the Ten Worst and Best Movies of 2013. I’m always interested in the movies that makes these kinds of lists as they seldom agree with my own ideas about the best and worst films of the year. Upstream Color was the Number 2 Worst Film, right behind The Host.
Shane Carruth’s other movie was the time travel story Primer and like Primer, Upstream Color is not an easy movie to understand. Unlike Primer, Upstream Color looks more like a movie with a budget. Is it one of the worst movies of 2013? I suppose it could be, but it’s definitely one of the most pointless and random films of all time.
I’m not going make any spoiler warnings, as I’m not sure there is anything here that can be spoiled.
Upstream Color starts off with a couple of kids experimenting with a drug derived from some kind of grub. We then shift to a woman being kidnapped and brainwashed. Her money is stolen and her brain is altered. She’s then taken out to see a pig farmer who relocates her worms to one of the farm’s pigs. Sound good so far?
The rest of the story features random shots of random people doing random things around Dallas. Some of these things have to do with the woman’s connection to her pig. Some of them have to do with the Pig Farmer making annoying new age music, which serves as the ever present background noise of Upstream Color.
There are a lot of pigs at the pig farm and it is implied-since NOTHING is ever explained-that each of these pigs has a human counterpart wandering around Dallas somewhere. Our hero, such as she is, thinks she is pregnant where her pig is pregnant and grieves for the loss of those piglets when the pig farmer dumps them in a creek. Their bodies poison the water, which I am guessing must be Upstream from the Pig Farmer.
In the end our hero feels her way to the pig farmer and kills him. She then gathers all the other victims together and they are last seen cuddling with their piggy selves and caring for their piggy children.
The purpose of any screenplay is to elicit emotion in the reader-and this is where Upstream Color falls completely flat. I didn’t care what happened to the victims and I didn’t have any dislike for the pig farmer. They were all blank slate clones without emotion and personality.
I’ll be watching ScriptShadow’s favorite film of 2013 later.
