Bulk
Part of An Evening with Ben Wheatley
While Ben Wheatley’s career may only span one and a half slender decades, he’s already made free with more genres than most directors in their entire lifetimes, encompassing hyperstylized literary adaptations, lo-fi horror experiments, and big-budget monster movies, followed now by Bulk. Shot entirely in secret, this midnight movie has both its feet firmly in the underground. It’s a tapestry of labyrinthine storytelling and hundreds of DIY effects ranging from stellar to bonkers—hurtled at the viewer at breakneck speed and thus making for a wonderfully delirious experience. Smack-dab in the eye of the storm are the real-life couple Sam Riley and Alexandra Maria Lara searching for meaning—and bound to fail in the process. (Markus Keuschnigg)
Ben Wheatley has long established himself as a distinct voice in British cinema. After his feature debut, Down Terrace, and the thriller Kill List (SLASH 2011), he made the black comedy Sightseers, which premiered at Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival 2012. He went on to make the historical thriller A Field in England (SLASH 2013), the dystopic High-Rise, and the gangster actioner Free Fire. A frequent collaborator of his is Amy Jump, who wrote and co-edited five of his works. In recent years, Ben remade the Hitchcock classic Rebecca (2020), directed In the Earth (SLASH 2021), an unusual mixture of folk horror and science-fiction, the blockbuster sequel The Meg 2 (2023) and, most recently, Bulk, where you should expect the unexpected.
