There’s a fungus among us? Yeah, going for the easy one there. But its apt for this flick, a kind of eco-horror movie with similar vibes to the bigger budget Annihilation and the similar budget In the Earth. This flick falls between those two other sci-fi/horror/trippy movies.

Gaia follows two forestry rangers who have an unfortunate time in the deep woods. One of them is injured and is taken in by a couple of (literally) dirty hippies. The two backwoodsmen seem to worship and fear the forest… probably because of the killer fungus monsters. Just a theory.

At times, this film feels like a slow burn indie art house film and at others it gives us some more traditional creature feature shocks. It’s similar to In the Earth when its being surreal and hallucinogenic but it also seems to know that you can go too far with the mysterious, ethereal trippy weirdness. So it steps it up on those occasions with some good creature designs and dramatic moments.

It can spin its wheels a bit with its pretensions and the main character makes some bad choices so both of those hurt what’s an otherwise solid picture. But, yeah, on two or three occasions, I got very frustrated with the lead. I guess maybe that was intentional… or maybe I was supposed to agree with her decisions. Don’t know… but I was annoyed.

But, hey, at least I cared enough to be annoyed.

This is a good, solid watch as long as you have patience and are willing to go with it. There’s enough story and character moments to go along with the dreamy, trippy sequences to make it fairly watchable.

Score: 78