Tuesday, September 14, 2021

LRF NOW Director's Cut: Cat People

Cat People - Director's Cut
Genre: Supernatural/Horror
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Writer: Lon Charles
Based on the 1982 and 1942 films of the same name
Cast: Barbara Palvin, Luke Evans, Aaron Taylor-Johnson

Plot: Carolina Szabo (Barbara Palvin) sits on a train from Hungary toward England. She nods in and out of sleep, dreaming brief glimpses of her older brother Erik (Luke Evans). She finally shakes herself awake and looks at a postcard in her hands. The card is blank but it was sent by Erik, who has been missing for years, from London.

Once she finally arrives in London after the long train ride, Carolina finds a hostel to stay at. In the middle of the night, Carolina wakes up when she gets the feeling that someone or something is watching her. She looks around the room, but only sees shadows and lights coming in through the window. She then goes back to sleep.

Unsure of how to even go about looking for Erik, Carolina decides to go to the local zoo. She has a flash of memories of herself and Erik frequenting the zoo in their home village as children. Walking around the zoo, Carolina is drawn to the panthers. She sits on a bench in front of the exhibit and watches for hours, not realizing that the zoo has closed around her. She is finally discovered by one of the zoologists, Oliver Reed (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). She tries running away, but Oliver catches up to her in an empty animal habitat. He tells her that she's not in any trouble and offers to buy her dinner. Having little money to her name, Carolina accepts the offer of a free meal.

Over dinner Oliver and Carolina discuss what brought her to London. She explains the postcard from Erik and how he has been missing for years. She says that she doesn't really have any plan, she just felt compelled to try to find Erik since he is the only family she has left. Oliver offers to help her get a job at the zoo. He tells her to come by the zoo and find him in the morning.

The next day, Carolina is hired to work at the zoo's gift shop. Carolina thanks Oliver for his help and gives him a kiss on the cheek. On her first day of work, one of the zoo workers is mauled to death by a panther during a routine cage cleaning. Oliver is pressured by his bosses to euthanize the panther, but when he goes to the cage to begin the process he finds that the panther has escaped.

Carolina wakes up in the middle of the night at the hostel to find Erik sitting at the foot of her bed. He is sweaty, dirty and bloody. Carolina helps clean Erik up. In the process, Erik tells his sister of a Hungarian folk tale about a werecat. If the werecat mates with a human, they transform into a panther, and can only regain human form by killing a human. Carolina tells Erik that she is tired and needs to go back to sleep. She falls back asleep while Erik sits in a chair next to her bed. When Carolina wakes up in the morning, the window is open and Erik is gone.

In an abandoned warehouse in a rundown section of the city, the police discover a bloody mess of shackles, bones and the remains of nearly a dozen human corpses. They suspect a wild animal was kept there and call in Oliver for his expert opinion. He walks through the crime scene and finds teeth marks on many of the human bones that he can tell came from a big cat, but says he would have to study the marks much more closely to determine an exact species.

That night, Oliver takes Carolina out for dinner again. After the dinner, they go back to Oliver's house where the two have sex. After climaxing, Carolina frighteningly transforms into a panther and flees out an open window. Oliver just sits in bed, utterly shocked. Police and animal control officers corner the panther Carolina on a bridge, suspecting she is the panther that killed the zoo worker. Just as they are about to shoot her, another panther emerges and begins mauling the cops. Carolina kills one of the animal control officers before they can shoot her with a tranquilizer gun. Both panthers then jump off the bridge, and swim away down the river.

Carolina and Erik both emerge from the water downriver, having transformed back into humans following their killing of the officers. Carolina tells Erik that she wants nothing to do with him and this curse and runs away. She comes back to Oliver's house where she explains to him the folk tale her brother told her. She tells Oliver that she did not want to kill him because she loves him.

While Carolina and Oliver sleep with their bodies intertwined, Erik crashes through the window in panther form and attacks Oliver. Carolina shoots her brother with a gun she found in Oliver's nightstand. The dead panther reverts back to human form when it dies. Carolina kneels down beside her dead brother. She then looks over to Oliver and tells him that she would like to be with her own kind. Oliver looks disappointed, but nods his head in agreement.

Oliver ties Carolina to the bedposts and has sex with her, turning her back into a panther. Oliver brings her to the zoo as the supposedly re-captured panther. Oliver tells her that he will always take care of her as he hand-feeds her a raw steak. As she eats the bloody meat, Oliver strokes the panther's neck lovingly.


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