Something to watch tonight: Friday 22 August

Gut Instinct (Dillaman, 2024)

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New Zealand is a small country and the creative community is pretty well-connected. That can make reviewing local work challenging as relationships are both important and fragile.

I try and acknowledge whenever I review something that has been made by — or stars — someone who I consider a friend. Sometimes you watch something and you just have to say, “Yeah … he’s a mate.”

But there are also times when you watch something and you just have to exclaim, “Yeah! He’s a mate!”

Gut Instinct is one of those. Produced, written, directed and edited by Doug Dillaman, it’s one of those film experiences that is so singular that if you ever find yourself watching something similar, you’ll have to say, “Yup, they’ve definitely seen Gut Instinct”. They’d have to be pretty brave to try, though, as the film has been a labour of … maybe not love exactly, but certainly obsession for over five years.

It’s a project that has grown and blossomed — dare I say it, mutated — over that time and has now arrived as a home viewing option after a series of special roadshow screenings presided over by Doug himself.

The film is set either in the future or a dystopian alternative present. Mankind is almost eradicated by an infestation of intelligent intestinal bacteria from space. The audience are the lucky survivors, about to undergo a procedure to remove the last traces of the invaders and attempt to restart civilisation. But first, we must be prepared, and the film is an informational documentary outlining — mostly — how we got here and also what’s going to happen next.

Periodic purges are required and at the in-person screenings the audience was given some consumable props to help things along. If you are watching at home, I recommend you prepare some morsels of your own to join in with.

Constructed from a voracious trawl through the public domain public information films that the United States government and businesses produced in enormous volume in the 50s and 60s, with the addition of antique medical textbook diagrams and some very amusing explanatory animation by Liam Maguren, Gut Instinct is a feast. It’s dense, intelligent — Doug says that it is roughly 60% scientifically accurate — and often hilarious.

Here’s a trailer:

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Where to watch Gut Instinct