Woodyanders Review of The Sea of Perdition

The Sea of Perdition (2006)

A nifty and offbeat sci-fi short from the always interesting Richard Stanley

[8/10 · 6 December 2009]

Richard Stanley, the wildly creative maverick auteur who blessed us with "Hardware" and "Dust Devil," comes through with a typically odd, yet stylish and compelling eight minute science fiction short that's admittedly light on plot and coherence, but compensates for these deficiencies with a startling array of hypnotically bizarre visuals. Feisty cosmonaut Sly Delta Honey (well played by attractive brunette Maggie Moor) finds herself stranded on the desolate planet of Mars. Honey discovers remnants of a lost civilization and enters a remote cave with a pond in it. After seeing an alluring vision of herself as some kind of nude water nymph, Honey has a heavy psychedelic trip about her death and gets turned into a skeleton. The picture concludes with a freaky humanoid fish creature walking across the surface of Mars. Okay, so the story doesn't make much sense, but thankfully Immo Horn's stunning cinematography (the evocative shots of the barren bright orange landscape are simply exquisite), snippets of various songs featured on the eclectic soundtrack, Johann Johannsson's brooding score, the dazzling special effects, a wickedly amusing sense of dry sardonic humor (the wacky ending suggests that this whole film might be some sort of cosmic shaggy dog joke), and the overall feeling of general strangeness make this baby well worth seeing for fans of Stanley's ever surprising and intriguing outré work.