Cosmatos is intent on remembering the 80s/Reagan era as a world of incredible violence hiding beneath the unsettling veneers of hippie aesthetics and social scripts that paint an incredibly different picture. If only, he says, you knew.
This film was definitely slow paced and very little happened, but it was an emotionally immersive experience where the retro lo-fi world cracked open with a horrifying history. underneath was a ritual that transformed as man into a monster who guards the Labyrinth, creating the girl who is trapped and used to keep the cult leader alive by siphoning off her psychic energy.
It’s rich in worldly details such as his assistant discovering the dossier of high sexualized scientific material — science being only a cheap veneer for the (white) patriarchal violence. The girl finally escapes the dome (very Gnostic, btw) — only to meet her hunter on the road and watching him die by his own excessive desire for her.
What little plot it does have seems to be the same skeleton later used by Ex Machina
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