"Plan 9 from Aliexpress" from the door makes you get involved in the work. Even before the first frame reaches the retina, you can begin to enjoy. The name creates an active two-layer context. First of all, “Plan 9...” shines brightly – a sign-indication on a film with a well-defined reputation and properties. Preliminary transfer of attributes is inevitable. The second in this game comes a more subtle substitution. Deep space is displaced by Aliexpress. The legitimacy of the process is maintained by the similar nature of these two entities: both of them are in their own way limitless and filled at once. After shifting the horror, the unknown, the threats and HAL9000 it knows what else from deep space is inherited by the online store.
The foreplay of the black and white epigraph is a nihilistic attempt to absolve oneself of responsibility for everything that happens next. The last line of the finale is death. But it is a failed in its desperation attempt to escape its own content. Ninety-six minutes of ignorance is proof, mince cannot be turned back, and the only way to succeed in what the epigraph tells us is to do nothing.
The main body of the film is designed with a sufficiently clearly readable pedantry, not to take seriously the previously indicated desire for self-denial.
The narrative is canceled by more or less careful and consistent reproduction of the same image, the change of details in which provides camouflage dynamics and sprays attention. The main character, or rather, the heroine, goes through a cycle of meetings with the most incredible characters. The same thing happens every time, with little change. This receptivity indicates a lack of genuine movement. The same goes for the same location: it’s always a ruin. Multiple contacts create drone texture, which is wrapped in a larger shape.
EnterTheVoidesque-titles three times serve as a cut-off for Gilliam's maneuver to change the appearance of the Gothic princess. A borrowed fairytale trail, three is a typical number for fairy tales. Immediately after the credits we are met by two ladies without logs. The allegory of their language gives nebulous guiding clues designed to direct attention and correct accents in the flow of a clearly and rhythmically structured absurdity.
A separate all-pervading powerful stratification are large veins of texts of mass culture. All of them are deliberately poorly disguised and add a certain seriousness to the light costumed lawlessness taking place on the screen. This textual transplantation reinforces the Plan’s status as a critical work of art. The presence and mention of other texts forms connections, the investigation of which raises the problem of the need for, if not radical, then at least some change in the analytical paradigm in relation to culture.
After all, it remains to recall the cascade of spontaneous details: random pantsushots, all masks recorded by the camera improvised conversations with passers-by, the continuous hunt of a white long-armed for a black latex dominatrix suit, a defect in the cheek, a slacker camera, and the fact that no item for this film was bought on Aliexpress.