Ben Wheatley’s Bulk: lo‑fi retro sci‑fi probing reality and multiverses

On a modest budget, Ben Wheatley’s film Bulk is a retro sci‑fi that leans on tongue‑in‑cheek paranoia, questions of reality and a proliferation of multiverses; its comic‑book dialogue has been re‑recorded, giving the picture a sheen of dreamlike unreality. Wheatley uses quirky lo‑fi special effects, including Airfix models, and the closing credits list a mountain of pop‑culture references in his own block capitals, among them Space: 1999.

With monochrome cinematography, Dutch angles and looming closeups the film offers nods to John Frankenheimer and Chris Petit. The review describes Bulk as "massively self‑indulgent, often funny" and says it is rescued from its not infrequent longueurs by its likable stars, Alexandra Maria Lara and Sam Riley, who are a real‑life married couple.

Riley plays a tough‑guy investigative journalist who is drugged and kidnapped by a snarling underling (Noah Taylor) and brought to a suburban house in Sussex that appears to be the childhood home of the reclusive multibillionaire (Mark Monero) he is meant to profile. The oligarch has built a "Brain Collider" — like the Large Hadron Collider but the size of a front room — used to probe the mysteries of consciousness.

The house functions as a portal to the intergalactic beyond or conceivably the interior of the mind, and Riley encounters Lara’s elegant, charismatic character who may be friend, guide or most dangerous enemy.

Key Topics

Culture, Bulk, Ben Wheatley, Alexandra Maria Lara, Sam Riley, Sussex