REPLACE (2017)

Studio:       Uncork’d Entertainment
Director:    Norbert Keil
Writer:       Norbert Keil, Richard Stanley
Producer:  Felix von Poser
Stars:     Rebecca Forsythe, Lucie Aron, Barbara Crampton, Sean Knopp, Adnan Maral, Laura Cuenca Serrano

Review Score:

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Summary:

An amnesiac woman whose flesh unnaturally ages and painfully decays discovers she can replace her skin with someone else’s.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

After their fifth date together, Kira Mabon goes home with Jonas Swierczynski and stays the night at his place. Unable to find Jonas the next morning, Kira leaves. Kira calls her friend Martha to recount the evening, but Martha seemingly hangs up after insinuating Kira is lying about her story.

Kira finds herself having inexplicably walked back to Jonas’ building. Kira returns to the apartment and finds it furnished as though she lives there. The only sign of Jonas is an old photograph of he and Kira together. Kira calls the number for Jonas in her phone and discovers it is disconnected. Kira calls the contact labeled ‘Home’ and the apartment landline rings.

Kira has flashback visions of her finger skin crumbling and of a little girl. Kira sees that the skin on her hand is decaying.

Kira meets her neighbor Sophia Demeraux, who claims that Kira has lived in the apartment alone for quite some time. The two women begin bonding and eventually become romantically involved.

When Kira and Sophia accidentally cut themselves on broken glass, Kira puts a piece of severed skin on her flaking hand. Kira’s flesh inexplicably absorbs the piece of skin.

Suffering from blackouts while her skin condition worsens, Kira visits Dr. Rafaela Crober at a specialist clinic. Crober dodges Kira’s questions regarding whether or not she has been there before. Crober advises Kira against absorbing any more foreign skin tissue. She also prescribes a painkiller that a pharmacist later reveals is actually for cell rejuvenation.

When the skin decay spreads up to Kira’s shoulder, she visits Dr. Czerny at a regular hospital. Dr. Czerny recommends that Kira continue receiving counsel from a dedicated specialist.

Kira sneaks into the morgue, cuts flesh from a corpse, and puts it on her skin. However, the tissue is not absorbed. Kira next assaults a bartender and cuts off her live flesh. This time, the skin becomes part of Kira’s body.

Kira continues seeing Dr. Crober. She also continues seeing Sophia, although they encounter brief turmoil in their relationship. Kira keeps the murder and skin absorption hidden from both women.

Sophia secretly observes as Kira kidnaps a dancer from a strip club. Kira later murders the woman in her apartment and uses the skin to replace her flesh when it badly decays again.

Kira experiences visions of Jonas as well as of herself as an old woman in the mirror. Kira and Sophia reconcile.

Crober tells Kira that she may have a cure, but requires a few more days of research. Kira steals electronic files from Crober’s office and brings them home.

Kira and Sophia watch the stolen video files together. The videos reveal that Kira is a woman in her sixties who voluntarily took part in an experimental procedure to reverse aging. The videos document Kira’s transition back into a younger woman. They also reveal that Jonas was Kira’s husband and she has an estranged daughter whom she can’t remember.

Kira proposes running away with Sophia. While Sophia packs her things and waits downstairs, Kira returns to her apartment. Kira calls her adult daughter, but becomes unable to speak when she hears that her daughter has a young child of her own. Kira confronts memories of her family inside the apartment before setting it on fire and leaving with Sophia.

Kira and Sophia’s search for other test subjects proves fruitless. Kira goes to her daughter’s house and meets her granddaughter. The little girl screams when she sees Kira’s decaying skin. Kira leaves before fully facing her daughter.

With Kira’s skin worsening once again, Sophia recommends that she return to Dr. Crober. Kira claims she can’t. Sophia reveals that although she did fall in love, she has been secretly monitoring Kira for Dr. Crober all along. Kira begins passing out. Sophia reveals that she drugged Kira’s water.

Kira wakes up restrained to a table in Dr. Crober’s clinic. Lamenting that she never should have allowed a test subject out of the lab, Crober explains that Kira’s missing memories are a side effect of the regeneration process. Uncertain as to why Kira’s skin absorbs foreign tissue, Crober begins painful experimentation on Kira that last for several days.

Sophia grows outraged over Crober’s torturous treatment of Kira. Sophia undoes Kira’s restraints. Crober injects a substance into Sophia’s neck. Recovering slowly, Kira knocks down Crober with a canister and uses her foot to crush the doctor’s throat.

As Sophia slowly succumbs to the effects of her injection, Kira kills several medical personnel in an effort to flee the clinic when it goes into lockdown. Kira proposes that she and Sophia disguise themselves in scrubs to escape. Sophia admonishes Kira for breaking her promise to not murder anyone else. Kira tells Sophia that she wants to live with her and the two of them kiss. Sophia tells Kira that she loves Kira too much. Sophia then takes the gun Kira stole from a guard, puts it under Kira’s chin, and pulls the trigger.

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Review:

Kira is uncertain which affliction is more worrying.  That she can’t remember any event in her life prior to one week ago or that her flesh is rapidly falling away from her body.

A promising date with new beau Jonas ends in spending the night at his place.  Kira wakes the next morning with Jonas nowhere in sight, though she leaves with no less of a smile over the prospect of ongoing romance.

Inexplicably, Kira’s walk home takes her back to where she started.  Confused, Kira reenters Jonas’ building and discovers his loft is decorated as though she herself lives there alone.  Jonas’ number is disconnected.  Calling the ‘Home’ contact on her phone rings the landline in the apartment.  And a neighbor claims Kira has lived there as long as she can recall, and she has no idea who Jonas is at all.

Meanwhile, the skin on Kira’s hand begins flaking away.  As time goes on, the condition creeps up Kira’s arm, necrotizing her flesh to the point where she can peel it away in bloody chunks.

Curiosities don’t cease there.  When broken glass cuts her new friend Sophia, Kira is compelled to place the severed sliver on her own rotting hand.  Kira’s body absorbs the foreign skin, refreshing her decaying tissue in the process.  At least one of Kira’s conditions has a cure.  Too bad it involves flaying someone else’s flesh in order to repair her own.

Comparisons to David Cronenberg are virtually automatic in any discussion of a “body horror” film.  What “Replace” successfully captures about Cronenberg that similar terror transformation movies do not is the sinister sexiness that can come from flesh-related fears.  It isn’t in the nudity or same-sex relationship anchoring the drama.  It’s in the way “Replace” positions horror using alluring atmosphere that is suggestive, seductive, and disconcertingly dreamlike in quality.

In addition to Cronenberg, Dario Argento is acknowledged in the Special Thanks credits.  Indeed, the giallo maestro’s influence of colorful creepiness stamps the cinematography with muted moodiness.  Director Norbert Keil achieves the effect he wants for Kira and her environment to have empathetic appeal through his images’ artistry as opposed to straight shock value.

Applying a careful artist’s eye leads into how the movie sidesteps reliance on gross-out gore as a main means of inducing unease.  There is certainly some of that in the audibly painful peeling of sliced skin or in watching flesh crumble as though it were flash frozen first.  But Keil knows his script, co-written by Richard Stanley, is capable of creating suspense through story.  The multiple mysteries moving “Replace” make it engaging beyond being a purely visceral “body horror” thriller.

Rebecca Forsythe repeatedly reminds of Deborah Ann Woll in the way she simultaneously embodies sultry fierceness with innocent vulnerability.  These dual tones are essential for composing Kira as a personality who can elicit sympathy as an unfortunate victim, and enmity as a potential murderer driven by vanity.

The dreaminess factor alluded to earlier is hurt by a 100-minute runtime.  The film’s smolder suits it for most of the movie, though slowness sets in by the third act, where it starts taking a greater toll on attention spans.  Several unneeded scenes (an early visit to a doctor and a later search for others in similar circumstances are two) yield little value other than delaying the main narrative.  Even when a final exposition explosion arrives to answer remaining questions, there is still another 20 minutes to go until end credits.  “Replace” isn’t quite overlong, but it does deal in more material than required.

A second slip comes when the “Orphan Black” setup with a “Neon Demon” aesthetic is abruptly exchanged for a slasher-heavy finale.  “Replace” goes nine-tenths of its distance with cerebral chills dominating physical thrills, then decides on a redirection that isn’t necessarily in keeping with the previously established tone.  Toss in heavy-handed villainy for a particular character during the last third and things teeter a touch toward cartoonish carnage.

“Replace” pulls back from that brink with strong suspense and stronger style.  Hiccups in the final tying of threads notwithstanding, the lady leads make for a charismatic trio stewarding the story through swings of horror, drama, and mystery.  A subdued stride might be seen as a stumble by some, though it takes more than an inconsistent pace to hinder heavy intrigue.

Review Score:  70

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