It all starts when Lola (Faye Tamasa) shows up to crash at her brother Louis’ (Burt Thakur) place. She is immediately creeped out by his weird roommate Cage (Robert Brettenaugh) but barely has time to begin adjusting before an unexplained city-wide mandatory lockdown is put in place. Between unresolved past sibling issues and the increasingly unsettling behavior from Cage, Lola is forced into a deeply uncomfortable and isolated situation made all the stranger when a bag of seeds is mysteriously left on their doorstep. With nothing else to do, Lola decides to plant them in a small garden outside. When the plant begins to secrete a dark ooze that creates a near euphoric sensation in anyone who consumes it, it begins to cause the tenants to spiral into madness, blurring the line between fantasy and reality, leading Lola to question not just her own place in life but her very sanity.

Terror Firma starts as if it is going to play out as a kind of mumblecore psychological drama. We immediately feel a sense of tension between Lola and Louis and their shared troubled past. Tossing in the deeply sketchy Cage who adds in an element of obsession and threat of sexual violence. But the movie takes a turn early on into much stranger territory, creating a bizarre and claustrophobic atmosphere that only escalates as we fall further and further into the proverbial (or possibly literal) rabbit hole. At times, this film’s mind-bending narrative is reminiscent of the lo-fi sci-fi/horror films of Benson & Moorehead, and I think if you like what they do, you may find much you’ll dig here too. Faye Tamasa in the central role of Lola is really well cast, exuding a “sick of all this shit” attitude while diving headlong into the more surreal elements of the story in the latter half of the film. The gritty cinematography and eerie soundtrack add a sense of immersion in this weird universe. It sets a tone early on that we are not on firm footing in regards to who these characters are and what will happen to them. To be honest, I will say Terror Firma may not be to everyone’s taste. Its increasingly unmoored narrative may alienate some horror hounds looking for a more traditional scare flick to get jump scared by, but those those with an affinity for the fringes of the esoteric, this movie gives our more outré friends a mind-melting journey to dig into.

While Terror Firma was obviously shot on a budget with the cinematography intentionally a bit washed out at times, MVD and Dark Arts Entertainment has given the film a nice, clean transfer that captures the blending of the naturalistic with the surrealistic quite well. For audio, we have a pretty straight forward Stereo track that captures the eerie sonics of the film pretty well, although a 5.1 surround track would’ve been nice to enhance the sense of immersion, particularly in the back half of the film. The disc’s primary extra is an audio commentary with the director Jake MacPherson and is quite good if you’re looking for more insight into what the hell is actually happening in the movie at times as well as a lot of behind-the-scenes info and anecdotes on the making of the film. Also included is a behind the scenes image gallery with on-set photos and a theatrical trailer.

Terror Firma is exactly the kind of film I like to stumble across randomly with no preconceived notions only to get sucked into a bizarre realm of twisted madness with its own internal logic. It is is a film that makes you feel as if you yourself may be losing your grip from reality. Fans of lo-fi cult cinema should be frothing at the mouth to check this out.