I watched it in three sittings. Each time for several minutes, taking breaks in between. During the breaks, I boiled my thoughts. I pondered deeply.
The film is shot in the horror-thriller genre. There will be no ending. No happy ending. You’ll have to imagine the finale yourself.But there will be conclusions. There will be thoughts.
The protagonist ends up in a prison—a social experiment. Two people per cell on each level. There are hundreds of levels. Once a day, a platform with food descends. The lower it goes, the less food there is... sometimes there’s none at all.
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The director relentlessly showcases horrific episodes, bombarding us with shocking scenes. They’ll linger throughout the film without answers.
Very quickly, I found myself among the film’s characters. I began to wonder, to join in, and to ask myself: How would I have acted? Here’s the chance to see myself in their place.
And questions keep popping up one after another.
What if the question of survival isn’t some grand, distant concept but a real, immediate one? A primitive question of survival where you have to eat another person. Literally devour them.
The analogy to recent pandemic events is immediate for me. The skills to survive in the struggle for human intelligence have worn thin. They’ve mutated. We no longer need to physically survive through raw aggression.
The world is gradually shifting toward sensitivity.
The universe gave us this earth. We have more than enough. Take what you need; don’t touch what’s extra. But no.
We keep doing the same out of inertia. The methods are just more refined. Sometimes even elegant. We’ve acquired elite habits, aristocratic airs, and mastered manipulation. We mask our fear and vulnerability behind consumerist greed, squeezing nature dry and squeezing super-intelligence out of ourselves. All under the guise of ‘necessary for survival.’ If you don’t eat, you’ll be eaten.
Scenes of people eating each other. My psyche accepted that as survival.
But scenes of humiliation and torment made me indignant. There’s no animal in nature that torments others for pleasure. But humans do. We’ve learned. We’ve learned to mask our fear with force. Force in unequal battles. To suppress the weak, take from the less agile, and dominate completely. All while hiding our fear of worthlessness.
It’s staggering how humans regress into primitively constructed mechanisms when survival is at stake. The psyche reverts to its most basic settings. A crudely designed machine with some truly appalling mental processes.
But why do we do this even when real danger isn’t looming?
We’re afraid. Afraid of being vulnerable.
We’ve learned to craft silicone breasts, plaster on fake smiles, and chase hollow success.
But we still haven’t learned spontaneous solidarity. Social solidarity.
Take what you need. And leave enough for everyone else.
Maybe we don’t need to survive through force anymore. Fight, flee, freeze—all through destructive aggression. We all know people living in their own castles with swimming pools, whining and fearing for tomorrow.
‘If the quarantine doesn’t end, we’ll all die. What will become of us?’
We won’t be the same when this is over. The world won’t be the same. The world will become better. Nature greener, fish more abundant, and humans kinder.
Kinder to their weaknesses and limitations. More attentive to their feelings and themselves. It’s a priceless gift to be alive.
