Rebecca Barry writes that the movie Enter the Void turns into an assault on the senses, transforming viewers into participants.
Paranoia, anxiety, dizziness. Nausea. Nervous laughter. A racing heart. They all set in within the first half an hour. This film was under the skin. The main character's bloodied body lay curled around a dirty toilet. It wasn't the camera zooming in to study the grim details, it was the
audience, trapped in the consciousness of the dead guy, who was living on in the otherworldy dimensions mapped out in his mate's copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Sunday night's screening of Enter the Void (R18) was the wildest, creepiest cinematic experience of the year, let alone the International Film Festival. Anyone who had seen notorious French film-maker Gaspar Noe's previous work, including the divisive and graphic Irreversible - with its controversial nine-minute rape scene - might have had an inkling they were in for something grim and uncomfortable.
But not even the familiar interior of the Civic, with its pretty stars and plush furnishings, could dispel the feeling this movie was tampering with the brain.
It literally was. I don't go to horror movies any more because of the tendency to watch the outer edge of the curtains rather than the screen. But once you "Enter the Void" you can't escape.
The problem wasn't necessarily the content, a twisted meditation on life, death and sexuality, a visually riveting one-shot sequence designed to immerse the viewer in the psychedelic underbelly of Tokyo.
It was the strobes. Look off to the side of the room, they're there. Shut your eyes, they're there. Cover your face, they're there.
Even the opening credits nearly caused a conniption. They came pounding on to the screen in Day-Glo colours, hard and fast to music that felt like someone repeatedly stomping on your ear. I wasn't the only one who had to look away.
Where were the warnings for epilepsy sufferers? For almost three hours the screen contorted and flashed, often blinding viewers with flickering white light. The only thing left to do was leave the theatre. But I was glued to my seat.
Strobes are deliberately disorienting and can cause mild panic and confusion not just in those with epilepsy.
They're used as a crowd-control device and once caused mass convulsions in kids watching an episode of Pokemon. I first experienced this horrible anxiety at a party in the 1990s. It was a big room, white walls, which coursed with strobes blinking at a speed my brain did not like.
Before I knew what was happening I was on the floor with my head in my hands, convulsing. Called the Bucha Effect, the disorientation is caused when strobe light flashes at approximately the frequency of human brainwaves. It was named after a Dr Bucha who identified the phenomenon in the 1950s when helicopter pilots mysteriously lost control of their aircraft as a result of the rotor blades catching the sunlight.
Here it was again, flashing on the big screen. Thankfully it never evolved into a convulsion but I felt spaced out for the rest of the evening.
As the main character sucked on his DMT pipe - an intense hallucinogenic that sets the mind off on a trippy tangent of hyper-fractal activity - it became apparent Noe wanted us to experience the ride too.
But when does a film go from a passive experience to something verging on mild brain-washing? We'd set ourselves up for this but was it clever film-making? Were we meant to enjoy it or was it pure manipulation? It was strangely compelling entering all those voids as the spirit of the dead guy visited his heartbroken stripper sister.
Call it junkie porn but Noe was arguably carrying out his duty as a film-maker not to pass judgment on his subjects, creating something indulgent and experimental in the process.
He was showing a slice of someone else's reality, surreal as it was. And yet I couldn't help but feel peeved there'd been no warning - other than the director's esoteric assertion his film was an "intoxicant" - that my senses were about to be assaulted, like a hard-drive defiled at the opening of an email.
I left the cinema hankering for a shower and spent the night repeatedly dropping off to sleep and waking as though I was slipping on to an electric fence.
Avant-garde film-maker David Lynch has said that a film is meant to transport viewers to another world. What if that world resembles hell?
I know I'm not the only one who had a hard time with the strobing screen. Several people left the cinema, including my other half, who reported feeling on the verge of his first-ever panic attack.
I followed suit briefly but - like a rat to a trap - returned to my seat.
I'll never forget that film. I wish I could.
