Haiku Revu: Tulpa

28 May 2013 - Nic Ho Chee

My haiku review of Tulpa:

"Laughter medicine,
Stat!" said the new director,
in Giallo writ small.

The film follows a high-flying female office executive and the out-of-office exploration of her carnal desires in an eponymously named members only club. With her fellow travellers she attempts to unlock a path to mental enlightenment using sexual activity to liberate her mind and follow the template laid out by the event's ever-present patron. As her mental dam breaks a black gloved killer begins to stalk her playmates until we're unsure whether the executive has another more sinister side. To clear her name she must find the unknown assailant and remain alive in the process...

This was a remarkably odd picture that we managed to catch at Frightfest 2012. I have never before been in a cinema where so many were finding what they saw so un-expectedly funny, much to the consternation of the cast who made it to the showing. From the badly dubbed bookstore owner who delivered lines like Ron Burgundy encountering a bag of random punctuation marks to the guru handing out advice like a sexually explicit dime-store Chinese cookie, the experience was broken on many levels.

It was supposed to be a return to Giallo form but appeared to be anything but. Exploitative and ridiculous by turns, it never really lived up to the initial genre busting promise, with horrible dialog marring performances from greats like Michele Placido... Michele Placido!

I could take this opportunity to take the film apart properly, but a small gulf of time separates me from my initial viewing and thankfully my addled neural pathways were quickly repurposed to more useful ends. Please take this advice and save your mental energy for something more worthwhile. I'm giving this two nuke-it-from-orbit-to-be-sure-thumbs down, avoid.

The trailer contains some nudity and a lot of gore, it should really be a Red-Band trailer.