While many examples of modern genre cinema continue to adopt (and exhaust) the aesthetics of their 1980s forerunners, few feel as authentically ripped from the fabric of that decade as the animated science fiction short ROACH™ (2022). Made by the Canadian multimedia artist known as schnüdlbug, ROACH™embraces the sights and sounds of fledgling video game technology and subsequent big-screen cyber tales like Tron (1982), resulting in an immersive lo-fi audiovisual experience that scurries its way along the margins of DIY-film culture.
Beamed on to the screen like a fuzzy transmission from an alternate timeline, ROACH™ is set in 1996, six years after an unspecified environmental collapse has left Earth a ravaged and mostly inhospitable planet. After a devastating attack on one of humanity’s last outposts, a young pilot (voiced by Sydney Thorne) escapes the wreckage by taking off in a stolen ship. But the giant flying cockroach creature that caused the destruction is hot in pursuit, and our protagonist must outrun and evade the monstrous threat with the help of the rickety ship and its sentient talking control system.
Much of this post-apocalyptic tale plays out abstractly, so that ROACH™’s ambient, vibe-heavy approach can take over. The action is illuminated in strobing red and black animation, with side-scrolling sequences of the tiny ship stalked and dwarfed by the roach’s ominous spiky mass feeling like imagery from a long-lost Atari game. Elsewhere, the dynamic between the film’s two speaking characters pays visual homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)—sparsely sketched close-ups of the pilot’s face in the cockpit as she and the control system interact. Although, in a subversion of HAL 9000’s nefarious intentions, the two characters work together to navigate the obstacles outside, even approximating something of a touching emotional bond. This culminates in an eyeball-melting climax that reimagines the Stargate Sequence as an 8-bit marvel, while the soundscape hums pleasantly throughout with a mix of bleeps, bloops, static, and funky electronic beats.
ROACH™ has intermittently surfaced thus far through limited runs of schnüdlbug’s self-distributed VHS tapes, a retro package that furthers the film’s appearance as a lost artifact from another era. Yet ROACH™ is also a work in tune with the current internet landscape, having used social media platforms as transitory streaming venues. And like the eponymous bug, ROACH™ is constantly evolving, with schnüdlbug periodically releasing remixed versions of the film, featuring different color schemes, music scores and additional scenes. Screening tonight in a striking anaglyph 3D presentation, ROACH™’s trance-like grip will indisputably launch your brain right into the ether alongside its marooned heroes.
ROACH™ screens tonight, June 27, at Spectacle Theater as part of the series “Roach Summer: Cosmic Cockroach Invasion.” Tonight’s screening also includes Terence H. Winkless’s The Nest and will be followed by a virtual Q&A with schnüdlbug.
