Replace (2017)

Kira Mabon (Rebecca Forsythe) wakes up with a bout of amnesia, a handful of strange dreams and short flashes of what might be memories. She takes her situation pretty well, or with a hefty dose of denial, depending on one’s interpretation, mostly pretending nothing is wrong – which is made a lot easier by what appears to be a total lack of social connections that makes the quasi-hermit writing this look like a social butterfly.

Rather more problematic for her than that pesky memory loss is the dramatic skin problem Kira is developing that finds increasingly large parts of her skin rapidly drying out, dropping and crumbling. Our protagonist does find out she has an appointment with a doctor the next day anyway, but when she meets this Dr Crober (Barbara Crampton), even Kira – usually acting as if she doesn’t quite know if she’s awake or dreaming – becomes a bit suspicious by the woman’s evasive behaviour and slightly creepy demeanour. Plus, the clinic the good doctor is working in looks right out of a Cronenberg/Panos Cosmatos movie. Not to mention that neither Crober’s medication nor her wait and see approach to Kira’s private body horror help the patient at all.

Kira does find something that is helping though: other peoples’ skin. And what’s a bit of murder when it keeps a woman beautiful?

German director Norbert Keil’s Replace (as co-written with Keil by that Richard Stanley, no less) does wear its main influence on its sleeve. Its weird medical interests, its focus on body horror and mental dissolution turning into a kind of rebirth into something new and not quite human, the disquieting erotic aspects to Kira’s inevitable acts of violence, as well as parts of its visual aesthetics all clearly point to early to mid-period David Cronenberg. Keil is certainly sharing a sphere of artistic interest with Panos Cosmatos and Joe Begos, though he also shares with these two enough of an independence from his influences he is able to make something of his own out of Replace.

It’s not quite as individual – and frankly not quite as convincing - an effort as what comes from Cosmatos, or Begos at his best, but what Replace delivers is still very impressive. If you want, you can read considerable parts of the film as a critique of the contemporary obsession with youth and an idea of beauty that can’t abide even the slightest traces of aging and the eventual death that signals. But I find myself mostly drawn to the often dream-like tone of the film, the shifts in time and space, the way connecting scenes are purposefully left out. All of this – together with Keil’s deftly non-realist approach to camerawork and lighting -  pushes the viewer into Kira’s fragmented mind space, not so much suggesting psychological alienation but rather a physical dislocation of the mind. Which, as my imaginary readers know, is the sort of thing bound to make me pretty excited about a movie. Though I am just as happy about movies these days containing lesbian love side-plots as a matter of fact, as it happens here.

One could criticize the film’s for its oftentimes languid pacing, yet this again helps draw the viewer deeper into Kira’s mind space, where today, yesterday and tomorrow all seem to feel equally distant from her, shifting together and drawing apart at the same time. It also makes for a particularly fine jarring effect when the film’s plot suddenly becomes fast enough for it to even include a couple of action scenes come the final act, whereas before even the act of murder seemed slow and perversely sensual.


It’s obviously not the sort of film everyone will like, but as far as I am concerned, Replace is very much what I’m hoping for when stumbling upon a film I haven’t seen – and hardly heard anything about - before, mixing the old, the new and the strange in exciting ways.