A submarine crew, a feared pack of forest bandits, a famous surgeon, and a battalion of child soldiers all get more than what they bargained for when they mysteriously encounter a never-before-seen woodsman.
Whilst The Forbidden Room is overlong and messy, it is still a lightning bolt of creativity from one of the most enigmatic and compelling filmmakers working today.
The film doesn't disappear, of course. It just folds into itself, again and again, ultimately transforming into an ecstatic, enclosed, gloriously self-indulgent expression of pure filmic desire.
Canadian iconoclast Guy Maddin has been making strange, surreal films that evoke the images and storytelling traditions of silent movies for decades. The Forbidden Room (2015)... is like a compendium of his obsessions and cinematic fetishes.
An intense and explosive sensory experience; An elegant delirium that injects vigor into contemporary cinema by returning faith to the power of the imagination. [Full review in Spanish]