Gaia is a South African ecological psychological horror thriller.
Gabi (Monique Rockman) is a park ranger for South Africa's forestry service. She and her partner Winston (Anthony Oseyemi) are checking digital cameras set up in the Tsitsikamma forest. When a drone Gabi is remote controlling is smashed, she heads out to recover it while Winston continues to check cameras. Gabi soon meets Barend (Carel Nel) and Stefan (Alex Van Dyk), father and son survivalists living in the forest, who understand the forest's dark secrets.
She was here long before the apes started dreaming of tropes:
- Agony of the Feet: Gabi fails to watch her step and gets her foot impaled by a wooden spring spike trap set by Barend and Stefan.
- Ambiguous Situation: Is Barend right, and there is a "God" in the forest plotting the destruction of humanity? Or is he a man driven insane by grief and rage at an industrialized world latching onto an (admittedly extraordinary) infection as proof that he's right and the world is wrong? The film provides no hard answer.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Barend goes out after mortal wounds dealt by Gabi, Stefan, and a fungus monster. With the infection taking him, mushrooms growing out of his back and coughing up blood, he desperately offers some of that blood in "sacrifice" to the "God tree" in hopes of receiving the mushroom that will stave off the infection. Watching him desperately claw into the tree hole, eating dirt and dead leaves in the vain hope there's something there that will spare his life... yeesh. Even he didn't deserve such a cruel end.
- Black Dude Dies First: Winston is the only black character, is the first onscreen to encounter the creatures, the first to be infected by the fungus, and the first to die.
- Body Horror: In spades.
- The creatures are just wrong, twisted fungal mutant monstrosities that bend all the wrong ways and used to be human beings.
- The fungal infection has a rabid appetite for homo sapiens, growing over and eventually twisting them into more fungal monsters. We see the process advancing on Winston and Barend, and it isn't pretty, and apparently extraordinarily painful.
- Gabi has nightmares about waking up to find fungal buds rooting in her skin, which she has to pluck out and scrape off painfully. It isn't long before these nightmares are reality, and the fungus really is rooting on and growing into her flesh.
- Stefan takes Gabi to see his mother. She's a fungus-laden tree in the forest, and one branch is obviously her finger, because it's pinched tight around a corroded wedding ring.
- At the end of the film, Gabi is transformed into an immobile mound of various fungi, implied to be still alive and suffering, and only vaguely human-shaped.
- Downer Ending: Gabi succumbs to the fungal infection, and it appears Stefan, for whatever reason, did not grant her request for a Mercy Kill. With nothing left for him in the forest, Stefan makes his way to civilization... but seems to have brought the fungus with him, as the final shot is mold rapidly growing on his leftover fast food sandwich.
- Eye Scream: As a result of the fungal infection. Barend states it attacks the eyes first, and all the victims we see quickly get at least one milky-white, possibly blind eye, while the other is covered in fungus, or maybe has fungus growing out of it.
- Eyeless Face: The creatures in the forest have no eyes, with structures like broad mushroom caps decorating their heads. The fungal infection that turns humans into these attacks the eyes first.
- Fan Disservice: Gabi is a very beautiful woman, and gets naked a few times over the course of the film. They are all in pretty disturbing contexts.
- The first time, she is forcibly stripped by Stefan because she got fungus monster blood all over her and the shirt and undershorts she was sleeping in, and they have to get the blood off her. The shirt and shorts have to be burned, forcing her to wear the roughspun Stefan and Barend supply with a sports bra and her uniform pants.
- The second time is how Gabi sees herself during the increasingly disturbing Mushroom Samba where she may or may not be communicating with a malevolent fungal Eldritch Abomination.
- The third time she's cleaning herself up and weeping after leaving Barend to die. Yeah, he was a nutjob who tried to sacrifice his own son, and then her, to a "god" who may exist only in his warped head, but she still essentially murdered a fellow human being, and is not taking it well.
- Festering Fungus: The fungal infection in the forest, which may or may not be the work of "God." It prefers homo sapiens, causing small fungal growths to bloom on their body, eventually fully converting them to a Mushroom Man.
- Gaia's Vengeance: Definitely, but precisely how is left ambiguous. Is there a "God" in the forest slowly building up to eradicate a humanity that's eradicating nature? Or is this just a particularly bizarre, but otherwise natural, fungal infection? Does humanity deserve to be transformed into mushroom zombies?
- Healing Herb:
- Barend mixes some kind of mud-and-plant poultice for Gabi's impaled foot. Overnight, her foot heals completely, leaving just a scar.
- At the "God tree," Barend and Stefan offer sacrifices of meat and blood, causing two mushrooms to grow. Eating these mushrooms apparently staves off the Festering Fungus.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Is this just a particularly odd fungal infection? Barend doesn't believe so, that there's a "God" in the forest making this happen. He and Stefan routinely visit a specific tree with a hole in the trunk to make offerings of meat and blood. These sacrifices are rewarded: a mushroom, apparently always in pairs, grows quickly in response, and eating it protects Barend and Stefan from the infection. Maybe the forest God is rewarding her faithful... or maybe there a strange fungus that evolved to combat the other strange fungus.
- Mercy Kill: When the fungus gets hold of you, this is your best option.
- Asked for by Winston. Gabi initially prevents Barend from granting it, under the belief they can get him out and he can be cured. But when Barend places the head of an arrow in Winston's mouth, Winston is able to use what little range of motion he still has to finish himself off.
- At the end of the film, Gabi is nearly completely covered in fungus. She asks Stefan to put her out of her misery, and is seen drawing his knife to try and do it herself if he refuses. Given that she appears to be still breathing when he leaves the cabin, after she is completely engulfed, he not only didn't grant her request, but stopped her from killing herself.
- Minimalist Cast: Only four major roles.
- Misanthrope Supreme: Barend has a pretty dim view of humanity. In his mind, they started really going downhill with the Industrial Revolution, and have only been gathering speed since. They're on the way to destruction one was or another, so if his forest God wants to burst forth and transform them all into mushroom zombies, well... can't happen soon enough, he thinks.
- Mushroom Man: The creatures in the forest are humanoid, but with definite "mushroom cap" heads, though more closely resembling large, thin, "sharp" edged ones than rounded or conical caps. They used to be humans, who were converted to this form by the Festering Fungus.
- Mushroom Samba: Gabi requests Berand help her "understand." In response, he and Stefan prepare a little ritual. Stefan paints her face, and Berand mixes up some kind of powder. He blows it in her face, and she immediately goes on rather disturbing hallucinatory journey, part of which involves her and Stefan having sex, and ends with the image of Stefan with an arrow stabbed into his mouth, indicating the God wants him for the next sacrifice.
- Sleight of Tongue: After Stefan sees The fungi are starting to take root on Gabi in the night, after he and Barend visit the "God tree" for a sacrifice and receive the special mushrooms, he hurries ahead of Barend, keeping the mushroom in his mouth, and quickly passes it to Gabi this way before Barend can stop him or figure out what happened.
- What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Stefan has been alone in the woods with his dad for thirteen years, meaning he spent most of puberty with no girls around. So he pretty quickly gets distracted by Gabi, even caressing her leg while she's unconscious and he's treating her foot. It takes awhile, but Stefan ultimately sides with her against his father, and leaves the forest for civilization just as she wanted him to. Though it's ambiguous if he really loved her, was just attracted to her, or was loyal "the God" the whole time and just using Gabi to advance their agenda.
