Bulk is the latest film from Ben Wheatley, director of many of the best-loved horrors and comedies to come out of Britain since his debut in 2009. The film is not being released in the traditional theatrical way, instead choosing to tour it around the country at screenings where Wheatley will be present, similarly to the way Hundreds of Beavers gained such success in the last few years.
It is a strange film, shirking traditional storytelling in many ways, but also situating itself in a long tradition of British science fiction narratives.
Given the initial narrative and formal oddness of the Bulk, I asked Wheatley to give a brief pitch for the film. “There's not really a pitch for Bulk. It was never made like that, you know. But if you would have to describe it, it's a kind of freewheeling science fiction, thriller, comedy, psychedelic midnight movie.”
It has been noted that Bulk is a more abstract effort from Wheatley, but that isn’t how he views the film. “I don't think of bulk as that abstract. I just think of it as - it's more cheeky and loose. It doesn't mind jumping about or going down a quick little road and then coming back up again. It's not too self-serious. I think that's quite important.”
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A lot of the cheekiness comes from the film’s playing with narrative, subverting tropes and taking a non-traditional approach. “The film is more about storytelling in general. Our society’s built out from narrative and our human condition is built out of narrative. That’s our main technology and maybe our first technology as creatures. They’re right at the front of everything that we do, for good or for bad”.
Ideas of storytelling are somewhat of a preoccupation in Wheatley’s recent work, his 2021 film In the Earth has a character who calls storytelling the main psychological problem in humans. “It’s something that I’ve been thinking about since In The Earth. Stories become facts very quickly; when people are presented with data points they can’t help but join them together, but often just because something works three times, doesn’t mean the fourth time will. Humans make stories and patterns and not necessarily the reality of what they are doing.”
Wheatley’s influences pull from a very wide range. During the film’s credits there is an extended acknowledgment which cites a huge amount of different films, TV and texts as being part of the creation of Bulk. One influence on the way he constructed Bulk comes from his recent comic book writing, in particular with British sci-fi legend 2000AD.
“I think the comics form is freer than the cinema form to write for. So you can really stretch your imagination and it doesn't have the kind of scrutiny maybe over it, or the amount of people looking at it as you might do with the studio film script. So you can be a lot more elastic with it. So I think that's been really changing my thinking over the last few years.”
He also speaks about the influence of video games, not only on him but “on storytelling in modern cinema” more widely. “I’ve been playing games since I was like 7 or 8 and play them constantly so it would be impossible for them not to be an influence. But then again I’ve read a lot of comics, a lot of books, watched a lot of movies and TV and adverts and listened to the radio. Modern media is not isolated islands, it's all one thing.”
“This is the thing I find confusing with how it’s dealt with often. It’s not a new problem, the idea of high and low culture colliding and existing in the same space but people still have a slightly snobby attitude about it. Especially now, you’re experiencing everything at the same time and the language of video games and of YouTube, or Instagram and Tik Tok is all going in and influencing how you create. I can’t help but do that.”
Going specific on videogames, I ask Wheatley what are the big ones for him. “Minecraft” he tells me quickly. “I love the music in it and I love the exploration. The liminality and the emptiness of it is very calming. It’s perfect, perfect music and then perfectly implemented.”
He tells me that he also pulled from video game music when working on the score for the film, which he himself composed. “The music is a massive mashup of all sorts. Video game-style music and orchestral and pounding dance music and weird piano. I just wanted to give the feeling that the film was broken. That it has a purpose and a rhythm and structure, but it’s just a little bit alien to what we’re used to.”
Having also recently worked on Hollywood budgets in the hundreds of millions - Wheatley recently directed a wonderfully nonsensical Meg 2 - Bulk is a welcome return to the smaller films Wheatley has made throughout his career. He notes its similarity to Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (a film close to my heart both because of it’s proximity to where I grew up, and the fact my mum was an extra on it).
The main difference for Wheatley is genre, “which is basically, well, I always used to say no one wants to see films about plasterers or plumbers necessarily, but you give them a more exciting job, you make them criminals or gangsters or police and people want to see it.” Although a clear lover of genre across all mediums, Wheatley says that at its core it is a way of dressing up a story to make it more riveting for an audience.
Given how distinct the vibe of Bulk is, I asked Wheatley to suggest a watchlist for people who wanted more of it’s off-kilter sci-fi energy. “I’d say Alphaville [Jean-Luc Godard] is the big one” but also other French New Wave heavy hitters like “A bout de souffle [Breathless], Weekend, Le Samourai". Beyond that, his suggestions lie in the realm of 60s and 70s British TV, “The Prisoner and The Avengers and Doctor Who, The Tomorrow People, Space 1999 and Sapphire and Steel, there’s tons of stuff.”
Bulk is currently still touring round the UK, with the only plans to stop being Wheatley working on new projects. For those who can’t go to see it at the cinema, and I urge you to, the film will be released in limited edition on physical media towards the end of March.
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