This is like when your friend that is into photography shows you their album with 300 pictures of a moody park. We get it, it looks great, it's dimly lit and everything has an almost oniric look. If you were making a documentary on Belgium in autumn, you would get a higher score. Unfortunately this tries to be a movie. Let's talk about the plot: this weird looking guy is the caretaker for a young girl. He has to change her dentures every day, because they are made of ice. Do you get it? No, me neither. It could literally mean anything. Is she sick? Is he a cold and distant father? Is this some kind of weird fetish? Is she a ghost? Nobody knows. They never speak and live in this rather big house with great wooden paneling, really the best part of the " movie". Then 10 minutes of silence while they look at stuff in the house. Going strong so far, too bad they decide to break the quiet with a telephone ringing. Apparently the weird guy gets paid monthly to take care of the girl, but he has to carry her somewhere in two weeks? So you think :" uh oh, this is some weird experiment or worse, i hope the girl will be alright.." .Nope, apparently he is imagining the calls, because later the cleaning lady has no idea about what he is talking about. Ok, some sort of "Shining" situation, where the father is not quite..there? Maybe, but also probably not? Then we leave the house, thank god, and we discover that belgium looks like a romantic poet's wet dream. Not a ray of sunshine to be had, the whole movie. The girl escapes and immediately drops into a lake, face first. Wow, do you get it? No, me neither. The caretaker takes her out and while doing so sees a lady looking at him from a little bridge, basically 5 meters from them. Ninja lady we will call her, since she disappears or appears at will multiple times, without the other character noticing. We will very soon discover who she is. She is none other than Celeste, the barmaid of the bar our hero visited one time. We see in what we will discover was a flashback that our hero stabbed her in the face with a broken bottle, while trying to stab a "stranger", which is a totally normal response, don't even question it. Our protagonist escapes the scene and never gets bothered by anyone because of this attempted murder. Not even by the neighbours, it's the perfect crime apparently. Now we follow the barmaid. Why? Who knows. She is in an hospital and a random guy is sitting at her bed when she wakes up. She even says :" Who are you?". He says that he will take care of her. Nobody asks him anything or question this in any way. Nobody else comes to visit, despite her being a fairly beloved barmaid in one of the not many bars in town. The guy looks a bit like a younger, creepier version of our "hero" . He then goes on to make her his property, ordering gyno visits for her, paying for her expenses, giving her drugs. Nobody ever questions this, of course. He procedes to make a reasonable proposal to her, once she is dismissed from the hospital. " Would you leave everything you know and come and live with me, a creepy stranger?". Meanwhile big things are happening in the house: our hero can't sleep and has vivid nightmares. Exciting stuff, i was smiling from ear to ear with happiness. Back to the main plot: ninja lady accepts the proposal of the creepy man. At that moment she sees our hero taking the girl out of the lake. See, everything that happened with ninja lady was a flashback. Mind blown! So then the girl has difficulties with her dentures, they won't fit anymore. Why? She apparently dramatically changed the shape of her mouth in a week. The hero is clueless so he just jam them in her mouth. Again, the "weird fetish" idea creeps into our mind, but let's hope it's something else. He asks the cleaning lady for help, but she is clueless and has no idea about any "masters". The phone rings but nobody is there. Now, i get it. The blood from the mouth could be a metaphore for the girl's first menstrual blood, which the "hero" could have problems handling. The cleaning lady would probably help but our hero is confused and manages to scare her away. But if it is a metaphore for the girl gradual change into a woman, then why , later, a dentist comes and give her glass dentures? I guess because glass has a weird significance for our hero? We see him contemplating glasses for minutes, we see even other people doing the same. They are trying to say something, that much is clear, what though? Once again it could be interpreted in many ways. Anyway then we are on a train, moving slowly into the beautiful grey and foggy belgian countryside. These scenes have all the excitement of a long, boring trip to work in a rainy winter morning, but less interesting. Our hero sleeps, once again, guy must be under sedatives at this point, he is barely awake when he is not sleeping. Our little girl is eating imaginary fleas from a black cat the dentist brought in their house, but never ever took back. Is the black cat a metaphor ? Probably. Or not. Womanhood? Depression? Disease? Guilt? A weird fetish? Who cares at this point. In another part of the train we have ninja lady and creepy dude, she is taking painkillers in a weirdly sensual way while a small boy watches. Oook, getting strange vibes movie, but let's pretend. They get off the train at their station and she is so drugged up that she can barely walk. Creepy guy leaves her on a bench to get a car for them, i guess. She sees our hero looking at her from the train. Now she suddenly can walk really fast and she gets on the train off screen. Nobody asks her for a ticket, which she shouldn't have because they already arrived at their destination. So our hero and ninja lady both arrive at the same station, apparently ninja lady put a spy device on our hero because she knows exactly where to go. We have her climaxing on the bed while our hero and the little girl eat in what we must assume is another room, maybe even a different hotel. Our hero starts climaxing too and then transforms into what we could only assume was the wife of our hero and the mother of the girl. The weird woman touches the girl hand, while making a strange face. Movie, i'm not sure i like these sensually charged scenes. Anyway, we arrive at what is probably an..orphanage? I guess. The main doctor there is the stranger our hero tried to stab in that bar one hour ago. Get it??? Hmmm...not really, no. He then goes to sign the custody papers and we discover he was the real father of the girl..or was he? Probably. He then gets out and sees a lady that he thinks is his wife...but it was ninja lady all along that stabs him in the face with a bottle! Can you believe it, ladies and gentlemen, she's got a broken bottle! It all comes together, it's like poetry, it rhymes. Then she starts sensually sucking his blood..WHAT??? I knew it, it was some sort of weird fetish! The End. No seriously, that's it. Now, if i get it right : the guy was in the war and is a bit..damaged. He had the girl with his wife but she died, which didn't help of course. He then isolates himself from the world and from his daughter, he sees her as a "thing" now. Later he gives her away, which i guess is something you can do? That's the basic plot. Probably.
Review of Earwig
