It’s easy to see why Franck Vestiel’s directorial debut may fast achieve science fiction cult status. Clovis Cornillac’s amnesiac character awakens naked in subterranean gloom amid what amounts to primordial slime but with no memory of how he got there or who he is. As viewers, we are as visually deprived as Cornillac’s character, as every-thing is presented in washed-out blue and monochrome hues, while the flickering heartbeats of Alex and Willie Cortes’s evoc-ative industrial techno and tribal beat soundtrack underscores the visual pulses into total darkness as a single light source fluctuates on screen.

Staggering his way through a labyrinthine network of tunnels and abandoned laboratories, Cornillac’s Tolbiac pieces together a makeshift mosaic screen in order to view a multiple video log he discovers. His action mirrors just what the viewer is being asked to do – assemble a narrative from the shattered technological fragments littered all around. The way in which we discover the truth, along  with Tolbiac, about the mysterious organisation known as Eden Log relies on a superbly sustained singular narrative viewpoint amid a stunning display of light and shadow. In one deftly edited, brutal and shocking moment, Tolbiac’s meeting in the complex with a woman exposes us, like him, as prisoners trapped within the filter of our own perceptions.

What makes Eden Log so compelling is the way the screenplay by Vestiel and Pierre Bordage assimilates and reconstitutes its sources. The homage to the Alien franchise and one iconic scene in particular is unmistakeable, complimented by ravenous mutant creatures on the prowl throughout the series of industrial levels. Visually, the film perhaps owes as much to the influence of the futuristic visions of the French comic tradition and artists such as Moebius and Enki Bilal as it does to cinematic SF. There’s also a debt to the gaming generation – Eden Log might be the greatest film of a video game never made. Anyone familiar with Doom and Half-Life will be right at home here, just as they will with the series of levels and levers Tolbiac has to overcome or the mask-and-Kevlar packing military units he has to tackle. Cornillac’s performance is rock-solid amid the literal mire, while the religious and political symbolism is never crude, even the Gaia-like environmental undercurrent.

The ‘Making Of’ tells you everything you don’t want to know, because Eden Log is a tense, brain-rousing visual tour-de-force and delivers the impact it does precisely because of what it leaves you to discover for yourself amid the faltering light and sensory deprivation. Franck Vestiel’s intense directorial flair raises Eden Log several levels above the vacuous light show and all-too-human stereotypes of most contemporary SF cinema.