Crew
Director/Screenplay – Ben Wheatley, Producers – Andy Starke & Ben Wheatley, Photography (b&w + some scenes colour) – Nick Gillespie, Music – Flintly Wheatham & Dave Welder, Production Design – Matty Mancey-Jones. Production Company – Rook Films.
Cast
Sam Riley (Corey Harlan), Alexandra Maria Lara (Aclima Benton), Noah Taylor (Karl Sessler), Mark Monero (Anton Chambers), Bill Nighy (The Voice)
Plot
Journalist Corey Harlan is dragged away by security officers Aclima Benton and Karl Sessler. They take him to a house where it is explained that the doors there open into other worlds of the multiverse. As Corey is dragged through other dimensions and into devastated worlds, he encounters other variations of Aclima and Karl who are engaged in revolutions or are try to imprison him, accusing him of being an impostor, while others are hunting him through the various worlds.
British director Ben Wheatley has gained a cult following. He first appeared with the crime film Down Terrace (2008) and his reputation took off with his next film Kill List (2011). He went on to make the U is for Unearthed episode of The ABCs of Death (2012), Sightseers (2012), A Field in England (2013), the J.G. Ballard adaptation High Rise (2015), Free Fire (2016), his remake of Rebecca (2020), In the Earth (2021) and The Meg 2: The Trench (2023). Wheatley has also produced Aaaaaaaah! (2015), The Ghoul (2016), The Greasy Strangler (2016) and In Fabric (2018).
With Bulk, Wheatley ventures into the Multiverse theme that has taken over superhero films in particular in the last few years. Although this is a much more low-key effort that is more in the realm of works like Coherence (2013) or Parallel (2024). The whole film is centred around four actors (three for the most part, each of whom plays multiple roles). Most of the action has been contained to a single house, while later scenes venture out into alternate worlds that appear to be in the aftermath of a warzone.
Bulk is shot in a bewilderingly dense style. Everything is filmed in black-and-white, although some scenes break out into colour. The look of the film resembles an experimental student film circa the 1960s – we even get inserted psychedelic trips at various points. People spout a lot of scientific-sounding double talk about branes and the multiverse that is not intended to mean anything but sound technical. The plot is near impossible to follow once we get into convolutions about Sam Riley leaving messages for himself with a paper fortune teller and being told that he is in a story.
One of the strangest effects throughout is the use of low-tech visual effects and especially model shots. These were apparently conducted using cannibalised model kits, meaning that we get landscapes where really obvious-looking planes and Jeeps move through them, which are also optically blended with the live-action actors. At one point, Sam Riley is told that a place they are heading towards is forced perspective and simply reaches out and picks up the cardboard model. On screen it looks as though these are scenes that have been shot using tilt shift photography, which creates an uncanny effect that makes real-life tableaux seem as though they are models. It gives the film a very artificial look as though it is trying to be a movie with bad effects.
By the end of the film, things get so wilfully complicated that you have no idea what is going on. It is clear as the film goes on that it is one not taking itself seriously and that we are not meant to either. Perhaps the nearest equivalent I can come up with is one of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s mind benders – Resolution (2012), The Endless (2017) and Something in the Dirt (2022) – having been shot with the low-tech, deliberate model look of a film like The Diamonds of Metro Valley (2010). Bulk feels such a baffling and hard to like film you feel that it would be a hard stretch for the Ben Wheatley cult to justify it.
Perhaps the most amusing aspect about Bulk is the end credits. These started out being narrated by Alexandra Maria Lara who then flubs her line and breaks into laughter before the camera cuts away to Wheatley and his crew. The rest of the credits are all ones that have been hand-drawn by Wheatley. (As one of the credits complains, this was more work than he thought it was going to be). The credits also include a series of notes and detailed diagrams on how they achieved the model shots and inserts into the war-torn terrain.
Trailer here