Gaia

Gabi is menaced by something while she sleeps

Gaia is a South African horror film. Unusual enough. An eco-horror, a survivalist horror, a myco-horror and a Freudian horror too. And somehow, in among all that, it even manages a bit of old-fashioned girl-in-a-T-shirt horror titillation, a demonstration of its limber ability to play to and against horror expectations. The supreme example of this comes early on, right after we’ve met Gabi (Monique Rothman) and Winston (Anthony Oseyemi), a pair of forestry workers far from base, punting up river in a canoe, on a mission to collect data. Having lost the drone they’re using as a tech wayfinder, they separate. Expectation one – this is a bad idea. This turns out to be … Read more