十字交锋

　　年轻的孕妇露丝逃脱了凶残的儿童邪教。在接下来的十年里，她匿名生活，试图使儿子免遭她小时候所经历的恐怖，但有邪恶跟着她，现在，她必须面对邪恶，或者失去孩子……

 该片剧本排2018年好莱坞“剧本黑名单”第二，讲述理查德·威廉姆斯的真实故事，这位精明务实、不屈不挠、没有任何网球背景的父亲培养 出了两个网球天才，她们后来成了超级巨星——维纳斯·威廉姆斯和塞雷娜·威廉姆斯(大威小威)。理查德·威廉姆斯为女儿们的职业网球生涯起草了一份78页的计划，女孩们在康普顿破旧、杂草丛生的公共球场上学会了这项运动。据报道，在那之前，她们的父亲与一些不喜欢这项运动、不肯让位的年轻硬汉发生了争执。威廉姆斯姐妹后来成为了网球史上最伟大的女选手之二。

一名男子在郊区一间空荡荡的房子里醒来，没有记忆，手臂上沾着血迹。当他疯狂地洗掉血迹时，他发现那不是他的。他在房子周围发现了一些便利贴，上面写着:“不要呆在这个房间里。”“别出去。”“别下楼。”他感到困惑，试图追踪这些神秘的信息，最终发现了两件事。他与母亲和女儿的记忆有某种联系，还有住在这所郊区房子里的恶魔。当他越来越接近解开他为什么在那里的谜团时，恶魔变得越来越强大，考验着他的生存意志。

　　Set in an underground dungeon inhabited by bundled, ragged human beings, after the nuclear holocaust. The story follows the wanderings of a hero through the situations of survival. People wait for the Ark to arrive and rescue them while their habitat falls apart.　　Delving deep into the dusty and long abandonded vaults of b-cinema in search of lost gems always leaves me with a bittersweet taste. On one hand the discovery of unexpected gems where no one would think them possible is a rewarding experience. On the other hand though it makes one wonder how many of these remarkable low-budget oddities, personal love affairs of directors never quite famous and now all but forgotten, have almost forever slipped from memory?　　n any case what we have here is a little post-apocalyptic gem from Poland that is really better than it has any right to. The dystopian near future of O-BI, O-BA finds a group of survivors of the nuclear war that ravaged the Earth inhabiting an underworld concrete bunker and biding their time as they wait for the mysterious Ark, an air ship of some kind that will come and save them. The Ark proves to be an elaborate hoax, carefully designed to give hope to the malnourished and desperate denizens of the bunker, while in the meantime the dome that separates their miserable existence from the nuclear winter outside is slowly caving in.　　What first striked me about the movie is the design of the bunker and the depiction of the survivors. The survivors are gaunt, filthy and terrible-looking penitents, dressed in rags and aimlessly wandering the neon-lit halls of the bunker like automatons. The bunker is a rundown, seedy place, with bright neon lights peering from all sides like the eyes of malignant beasts.　　On one hand it is a slightly 80's depiction of the dystopian future but the movie never stoops down to MAD MAX cheese. Instead it combines biting political satire with the bleak outlook of a world with no future, black comedy with barbs on apathy, religion and power. The survivors, for example, are fed some kind of flour dropping from a tube that hovers in the air - later on we discover the food supervisor uses books and the Bible itself as filler for this meagre meal. There are many such short symbolic touches, perhaps not life-changing or faith-restoring, yet playful, clever and inspired.　　One thing is for sure; O-BI, O-BA is not your run-of-the-mill sci-fi schlock. It overcomes its modest budget with creativity and has genuine artistic aspirations both from a writing and directing perspective. My opinion is that it should have been filmed in black and white instead of colour though. The director uses atmospheric light and shadow to great effect and it would have registered even better in stark black and white. The blue-green neon on the other hand outstays its welcome after a while. Just a minor gripe in an otherwise solid b-movie with its heart set in all the right places.　　Imagine a less bleak THE ROAD (Cormac McCarthy) being injected with the satire and humour of DR.STRANGELOVE and you're getting there. See it if you can find it.