SHADOWS contactless: 9 PM Friday July 10 SBS on Demand + Messenger: THE ENDLESS

Ever heard of mumble core? That's because it pretty much faded before it could find a hand hold back in the 2000s. The idea was "millennial understatement meets..." It had its own bona fide auteurs and festival darlings. But now it's only part of an approach to indie movies, a kind of exotic touch to the cocktail. What happens, though, when you get that and smash it against the cosmic horror of HP Lovecraft? The answer is Benson and Moorhead, one of the oddest teams of filmmaking from the past three decades.

Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead  play brothers Justin and Aaron who, having escaped from a cult while young have been sent an alluring VHS tape welcoming them back for a visit. One wants to go back just one more time and the other brother wants to keep clear. Nag nag nag, the older brother agreess but for ONE DAY ONLY! Old UFO death cult where the significant members don't seem to have aged a day in the last decade, what could go wrong?

The Endless is a new form of fantastical cinema. It does have the deadpan humour of mumble core, where self aware players tell each other how culty the thing the other said was. But it also does the homework and puts genuine chilly mindwarp moments in. This is really not just laughing at the new age hippies, it's the shock of finding that they really might have a point. And then there seems to be something spreading out and getting comfortable in the lake.

Join me for a trek through some dizzying mind games and earthy day-to-day observations of same. It's Benson and Moorhead and they're the future ...  in a sense.