Movie Review: "Lava" (2021)

Lava Movie Review

Written by Stuart D. Monroe

Released by Rock Salt Releasing

Directed by Ayar Blasco

Written by Ayar Blasco, Salvador Sanz, and Nicolás Britos

2021, 73 minutes, Not Rated

Released on March 15th, 2021

Starring:

Janeane Garofalo as Débora

Review:

Sometimes it just be like that.

We’ve all been there, right? You’re spending an evening with your best friends at the apartment after a long day of tattooing. You’re digging into the season finale of Gain of Clones when the show turns to dead air and fuzz. Every device is the same. Then comes the signal- a series of random images broadcast the world over. Two minutes of virtually everyone’s lives are forgotten. Also, giant black cats now perch on the rooftops of buildings all over the world, silently appraising in sphinx-like fashion. Society begins to break down around you.

Why weren’t you affected? Why cats? Why are they just sitting there watching? What’s this “Lava” fanzine, and why is it foretelling the insane worldwide events? Who really owns your art once you put it into the world? Who’s really in charge? Are you bisexual? Where’d the giant snake and the giant witch come from? If these were all the questions facing Débora (Janeane Garofalo; Mystery Men) in Ayar Blasco’s batshit crazy animated puzzle, Lava.

Symbolic much?

The animation is a blend of the lines and structure of Bob’s Burgers with jarring flashes of Liquid Television-esque violence and Bill Plympton-style weirdness. It’s a seriously heady mix made more so by the number of themes and axes to grind being thrown at you in addition to the linear plot of the group of tattoo-bonded friends and their alien apocalypse. Then there’s a romantic B-plot that plays lightly with variety of sexual orientation (while being pretty tasteful, generally speaking). If that’s not enough to chew on, you’re treated to a final 10 minutes of random animation that’s one hell of a lot weirder than everything that preceeds it. Tall order? Yeah. But Lava pulls it off.

There’s a phrase that fits the film perfectly: “too many cooks in the kitchen”. It’s not an uncommon issue, be it an Argentinian film featuring English language voiceover or a Hollywood blockbuster. What really makes Lava stand out, however, is that the aforementioned cooks are cooking their collective asses off. It’s jumbled as hell, a messy clusterfuck of a movie…but it’s highly watchable to the point of (at times) being nearly as hypnotic as the titular alien broadcast signal.

Where Lava is most effective and engaging is when it’s at its most hardcore. Débora’s nightmare sequence, where she’s tattooing a skinless man’s “outfit” as he hangs out and compliments her work, is straight out of Hellraiser. There’s no shortage of grisly car crashes and well-timed destruction. It’s not without moments of a They Live for 2021 vibe, and who can complain about that?

Lava has serious rewatch value for those who love films that drown in their own subtext. You could watch it five different times and get five different flavors depending on what you’re looking for. You could just as easily watch it once and walk away with a confusing but highly memorable experience that’ll leave you looking at black cats and fanzines even more warily.

Whether you choose to deep dive into the oddity of Lava or simply once off it like a fever dream, you won’t be able to forget the animated fable that doesn’t break the fourth wall so much as it does run back and forth in wild loops across the son of a bitch.

Come for the cats…stay for the subtext. You might want to take notes, though.

Grade:

4.0 out of 5.0 stars