The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Watched about half of this film in one sitting and then came back the next day and had my twin boys (8 years as of this viewing) watch it with me. I wanted to talk to them about the idea of film, I thought maybe through cartoons they had seen fake versions of when the film would get stuck in the projector and start to heat and melt/burn.Indeed for some of us old enough, we recall this in school or at home with threaded projectors before the advent of digital. Plus I used it to talk about the idea of an image that is scrambled can sometimes have a transfixing effect on the viewer, as you are not sure what it is. I left out the porn overtones (they are 8) but in terms of UHF/VHF or any kind of corrupted signal, how interesting that is.And then we just talked about film being experimental and not necessarily telling a story. Like painting or a sculpture. Well, this is that sort of film. From reading one or two reviews here, am I to believe that the film was not doctored in anyway? Rrreaaly? The boys did see the boxer scene, and that was tremendous they had some creative responses to that, but I would have bet the biggest tub of popcorn that it, and several other images (like the reverse images early on) were indeed artistically created rather than merely damaged by time.Anyways, I might have convinced the boys, and myself too. I think some of this sort of film works better in shorter sittings anyways, but I know a friend of mine who clued me into the great Ann Arbor Film Fest definitely digs Morrison, so I was happy to get a chance to see this, albeit at home on, yep, digital disk.Oh and I cannot resist clicking the SPOILER box for this one just for a lark.

Decasia isn't so much a movie, more an endurance test. It is about as far away from a mainstream blockbuster as the world of film is likely to get, composed as it is entirely of neglected film stock that has decayed over time. Bill Morrison may be classified as the director, but in truth, he's more of a collage-maker, tying all these images together and attaching a haunting score over the top then letting the results speak for themselves. It's certainly an interesting approach, but when you get down to the nitty-gritty, it doesn't half make for a boring film.Sure, you can wax lyrical about the otherworldly experience of watching long dead people going about their lives and how combined with the music, it creates a trance-inducing hypnotic effect, but sitting down to watch it and then talking about it afterwards are two completely different things. If you are a chain smoking nihilist with a beard and a beret you'll probably love it, or at the very least pretend to like it in order to look clever, but I thought it sucked. I'll stick to the Indiana Jones trilogy thanks very much.

Bill Morrison's 2002 experimental feature just has to be seen to be believed. From thousands of decaying archive prints, he's selected the most baroque examples of negative decay in which the nitrate-based film stock has degraded to the point that its images melt into one another or are partially obscured under whirling vortices of psychedelic disintegration.The finished effect is simply stunning. A boxer unleashes a flurry of blows at the spot where his opponent once stood but which is now obliterated by a seething column of celluloid magma.Nuns escorting a crocodile of schoolchildren are thrown into a near-photo negative contrast, making them look more like daunting sentinels herding their captives. A kissing couple attain a sense of heightened reality in a world rendered in shimmering tones of silver by the process of decay. Phantom faces and objects swim momentarily into lucidity from images now transformed into a kaleidoscope of amoebic distortion and static.In a courtroom scene, the elderly female witness shifts in and out of certainty as her features are pulled and warped like gum into monstrous facades suggestive of liquefying skulls while the judge delivers his verdict from the writhing face of a nightmare. These images insinuate themselves into the imagination like bad dreams recorded directly from the subconscious and imperfectly reassembled via primitive technology. They feel as if they might have been the ancient television broadcasts of some impossibly distant alien culture, plucked out of the cosmos by radio telescope and translated for human eyes. To complete and reinforce the experience, Michael Gordon has contributed an astounding soundtrack, likened elsewhere to the sound of a plane crashing in slow motion and calling to mind the more haunting industrial works of Philip Glass, rescored for an apocalyptic funeral mass. You could turn off the sound and play the film to, say, something delicate by Debussy for a totally different experience but that would only deny you the awesome, hypnotic power of the visuals and music working in harmony.Morrison's selection of material appears to be far from random and he's evidently chosen images of permanence and stability for the ironic effect of watching them transformed by inevitable corruption. This remarkable project works on so many levels – as a slice of cinematic history from the earliest days of the medium; as a study in the nature of decomposition; as a rococo piece of visual and aural entertainment for the chemically enhanced; even, perhaps, as the most authentic science fiction film ever made. If the function of cinema is to transport its audience into another reality via the willing suspension of disbelief, to show them things they've never seen before and to create a compelling emotional state from a synthesis of sounds and visions, Decasia: The State Of Decay must qualify as one of the most accomplished examples of the form produced to date.Guaranteed, you've never seen anything else even close to it.

Close to 70 minutes of footage that is rotting away, accompanied by a discordant symphony. It sounds like slow torture, and to some, it may be. But to me, it was like looking at visions of a lost civilization. Trying to scry the images out of decomposing footage was akin to reconstructing a piece of pottery from shattered fragments.The "decaying" music was a haunting accompaniment to the film, complete with detuned pianos and an orchestra that played out of phase with itself. But the visuals hit me the hardest.This is what happens to film if we neglect it. All those visions of the past are being lost forever to time and the elements. The silver nitrate base of those films decomposes at the same rate as human flesh! To me, the film was both a poetic look at decay, something that happens to everyone and everything, as well as how our cinematic history is vanishing as we speak.It goes without saying that this film is not for everyone, but if you truly want to step outside the boundaries of conventional cinematography, this is it!