Slime molds. They're weird, kind of gross sometimes too. But they're an integral part of our planet and they have an unusual relationship with mankind. The Creeping Garden, a feature length documentary directed by Tim Grabham and Jasper Sharp, explores this in quite a bit of detail. The end result is a movie far more engaging, and trippy, than you'd probably expect given the movie's subject matter.

Those expecting the kind of movie you might get in a high school science class are going to be taken aback pretty early on in this picture (although archival clips from some vintage educational films are used here and there). Yes, there are a few scientists her to ramble off all sorts of interesting facts and figures and to provide the movie with the context it needs, but the real highlight of this picture is the visuals. Loads of time lapse and macro photography is used throughout this feature to show us how the various molds move, how they eat, how they live. Grabham and Sharp take their gear into various locations where slime molds are studied and grown such as the Royal Botanical Gardens and show us firsthand how these organisms slowly eat things and essentially leave behind a trail of slime. It's bizarre stuff, but completely fascinating.

This is all set to an absolutely awesome (and occasionally genuinely disturbing) soundtrack created by Jim O'Rourke. Somehow O'Rourke's compositions seem at their most intense when the documentary explores how slime molds are used in robotics and computing, where the living and the mechanical enter into an unorthodox symbiotic relationship. But again, the visuals are what really sell this picture. If you've ever wanted to see a slime mold navigate its way through a plastic maze, this is the movie for you. And let's face it, you do want to see that, even if you didn't realize it before.

At eighty-four minutes in length The Creeping Garden manages to maintain a nice pace from start to finish. This could have easily gone off into ‘talking heads' territory or gone overboard with the tech and science speak, but it doesn't. The interviewees are clearly super intelligent and experts in their fields but you never feel like they're talking down to us. The information that they deliver is interesting and completely relevant to the visual side of things. The editing is quite strong, giving the movie a nice flow that manages to keep us involved from start to finish. As such, production values remain strong for the duration of the movie.

At times this feels more like a strange horror or science fiction picture than it does a documentary, but what we see is all very real. This makes The Creeping Garden even more compelling than it would be otherwise, and it really is one of those odd features that should appeal not only to those with an affinity for science documentaries but also cult movie and fringe cinema fans as well.

Video:

The Creeping Garden arrives on Blu-ray from Arrow in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 2.35.1 widescreen on a 50GB disc. The image is pristine and shows excellent detail, all those close up shots of strange molds really look almost hypnotic here. This is one movie that you'll definitely want to see in HD, just to take in how much the image really pops. There are no problems with compression artifacts or edge enhancement and color reproduction is excellent. Black levels are nice and deep as well, but never to the point where any detail is crushed out. It's hard to imagine anyone taking issue with the video quality here, this is an excellent transfer by anyone's standards.