Hellevator: The Bottled Fools (AKA Gusher No Binds Me) Review
Despite the obvious limitations of a microscopic budget first time director Hiroki Yamaguchi has marked himself as a talent to look out for with Gusher No Binds Me, just released on these shores by Media Blasters as Hellevator: The Bottled Fools. With a visual style that borrows liberally from Terry Gilliam's Brazil and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's City of Lost Children Yamaguchi tells a wholly original story of life in a nightmarish, underground dystopia.
The story of Hellevator plays out in a near future police state, one in which humanity has been forced underground, presumably by some major catastrophe. The human settlement is built in layers of underground tunnels stacked on top of each other and linked by a system of transport elevators. Living in this world is Luchino, a seventeen year old girl with a tragic past and hidden telepathic abilities. Forced to flee security forces for her possession of contraband cigarettes - a felony in this world - Luchino takes refuge in a nearby elevator, her escape eventually spoiled when security forces comandeer her elevator to transport a pair of violent criminals and the elevator is disabled by an underground explosion.
From here on in we have a violent, claustrophobic character study a la Cube. Yamaguchi has assembled a broad range of characters - a school girl, a young mother, a professer, a sullen teen, the coolly efficient elevator operator, the two criminals and their police escort - and the question is how each will respond to the pressures of their situation and who will survive.
While there is no doubting that Hellevator is an ultra low budget affair - audio and video quality both tip this off at different stages - Yamaguchi largely overcomes his limits by confining the scope of the film to a handful of finely detailed retro-tech sets, an array of interesting camera angles, a handful of solid performances and quality use of effects both digital and analog. While far from a perfect film - in addition to the budgetary limits the script is a little under developed - Hellevator is an impressive debut, one that clearly shows Yamaguchi has a natural eye for mood and composition. Give the man a bit of time and a bit of money and he could produce something truly dazzling. At the very least he should prove to be a more thoughtful version of Ryuhei Kitamura.
Media Blasters has done a surprisingly thorough job packaging and presenting such a little known film. You get an anamorphic widescreen transfer, flawless English subtitles and the original Japanese 2.0 soundtrack plus a 'Making Of' feature, a discussion of the film's worldview from the director, plus cast and crew interviews. All in all a solid package.
