One night, I was really high. I floated down a YouTube rabbit hole, as one is wont to do when high. That’s when I discovered video game walkthroughs, which are recordings of people playing games from start to finish. I watched a walkthrough for Evil Night, a light gun arcade shooter from 1998, with raptured attention that would usually be reserved for reading Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon II. This was mostly because of the game’s cutscenes, which felt like warped conjurings from the mind of a 13-year-old serial killer. I had the greatest idea of all time, as one is also wont to do when high. Wouldn’t it be cool if someone made a full-length movie in the style of video game cutscenes?
Ten minutes later, I discovered that my greatest idea of all time already existed. And it was called Galerians: Rion.
Rion wakes up in a high-tech medical bunker. He has no memories. But he does have the powers of Charlie from Firestarter (lighting people on fire), Spider-man villain Electro (electrocuting people), and Carrie from Carrie (mutilating people with household objects). With the help of his dead parents’s ghosts and sister Lilia, Rion embarks on a quest to stop a super computer named Dorothy from taking over the world with androgynous, super-powered beings called Galerians. Lots of people are set on fire. Rion battles a few bosses, including a faux Terminator and Birdman, a regular guy who wears denim overalls with no shirt. Eventually, Lilia and Rion track down Dorothy. She lives in a building called Cloud Mushroom Tower, which is also a great descriptor of this movie.
Galerians: Rion is a true alien lifeform. Cut together from a three-episode Japanese OVA (original video animation) that was itself an adaptation of the Playstation game Galerians, Rion feels like a mall-goth variation on H.R. Giger that was combined with a stack of X-Men Adventures comics and Stephen King’s Skeleton Crew—all realized through the magic of Playstation 2-era cutscenes. I wasn’t surprised when evil henchmen were torn apart by telekinesis. Or when it was revealed that the character of Lilia held a computer virus in her brain. But I was surprised that I was never bored while watching this. It’s a hypnotic, psychedelic experience that moves fast and never overstays its welcome at 73 minutes. While the plot has shades of any number of manga (Mai the Psychic Girl in particular), Rion excels at delivering a sensory overload with landscapes resembling the alien’s lair from Contra and techno blast-beats. As a movie, it’s pretty okay. But as a cultural artifact, it’s fascinating. One of the characters sums it up best when they say, “It seemed like a bad dream, but strangely beautiful.”
I watched Galerians: Rion in its original Japanese language with English subtitles. The DVD also includes an alternate English language dub featuring music from Slipknot, Svendust, Fear Factory, and Skinny Puppy. Trust me when I say that listening to the alternate track—even “just to see what it sounds like” for a second or two—will destroy your faith in humanity.
