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Octane (film)

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Octane (aka Pulse in the United States) is a 2003 film by Marcus Adams. The story follows Senga Wilson, a recently divorced woman, trying to save her 15 year old daughter Natasha from a bizarre cult obsessed with blood and cars.

Tagline 1: Driven by Evil

Tagline 2: Evil Has Entered the Arteries.

Tagline 3: In the Vein of Terror

Contents

Plot

[Spoiler warningSpoiler warning]: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Senga and her daughter Nat are on a 6-hour trip home after a visit to her ex-husband Marek, for Nat's birthday. After a short break for energy, they pick up an unnamed hitchhiker, identified as the backpacker. Nat is very drawn to her laidback and philisophical personality. The backpacker asks if it's ok to play a CD she picked up in India, which Senga agrees to. Senga appears to find the strange ambient music disturbing, but the backpacker doesn't seem to care, continuing to talk to Nat. She asks to be dropped off at a picnic area just ahead. After a moment, Nat realizes that she forgot her CD and sends Senga to look for her so she can return it. After looking for an extended amount of time, she gives up and decides to keep driving.

Soonafter, Natasha receives a call from Marek, who says she forgot her present and that he can meet them in half an hour if they wait for him. Senga reluctantly agrees.

While waiting, Senga appears to have a mild hallucination while watching an infomercial. It ends when Nat's phone rings and Marek announces his arrival.

In the parking lot, Marek gives Nat her gift: A pair of tickets to a music festival that Senga has already said Nat cannot attend. Marek slinks away from the argument and leaves Senga and Nat in a very heated discussion that ends with Nat telling Senga she hates her and storming off. It takes Senga a while to realize that Nat didn't run to the bathroom: she met her old friend the backpacker, and a strange couple Senga had seen twice before, and was now leaving with them in an RV. Horrified, she solicits the help of a police officer who follows the RV in her patrol car.

Unable to keep still after a brief encounter with a Christian missionary ("Are you familiar with the words of Jesus Christ?" "Are you familiar with the words fuck off?!") Senga goes after the police officer and the RV in her SUV.

She finds the RV group and the officer talking, but nothing happens. They leave for a moment and Senga takes the opportunity to investigate the RV, finding a number of strange things, including canisters full of blood, identification cards and videos of people talking about their "past lives". Senga flees from the RV when she sees its owner's coming back. They take off and Senga continues to follow.

This time, however, the backpacker appears in Senga's car and attacks her, forcing her to crash. She escapes and leaves Senga for dead.

The next scene shows the backpacker telling Nat about their "group," and their leader, who she identifies as The Father.

Senga is woken up by a stranger (The Recovery man) who tells her that instead of trying to get her car on the road, she should come with him. In his pick-up truck, she finds a picture of a girl she saw in one of the videos in the RV. He tells her that the girl in the picture is his dead sister, Christine, and that she should go to the police to report her accident and (to her surprise) her daughter's abduction.

The police, however, are somewhat less than helpful. She has a difficult time explaining the night's events, so she tells them to call Marek. The man who answers Marek's phone is not Marek, but he tells the detective that Senga has been on medication since the divorce and that she may be delusional. When asked about Nat, he says that she has been with him all weekend. Angry and confused, Senga leaves and goes through a series of hallucinations and outbursts. She encounters three of the cultists and hides from them. They leave after they stop looking for her and she, once again, follows.

She follows them to a (mostly) abandoned research facility and sees that Christine's brother has also followed. Senga enters the building while Nat meets the Father. Chris sets off one of his bombs, which kills most of the cult members: The police officer, the vacationing couple and the trucker. Using this to her advantage, Senga enters the chamber in which the Father is giving Nat her initiation and attacks him. Nat and Senga run in different directions while the joyrider and backpacker try to find and kill Senga, and the Father tries to find Nat. Senga manages to subdue her pursuers while Nat is lulled by the Father's words over loudspeaker. Senga finds another transmitter and the two have a brief war-of-words, during which the Father reveals that Senga wanted to have an abortion when she was pregnant with Nat. This causes Senga to go into a state of shock in which she sits perfectly still and blank.

Christine's brother finds Senga and snaps her out of her retreated state and shows Senga the body of Marek, whom the cult members killed before he got five miles down the road after leaving the rest-stop.

After another short series of events and exchangings of words, the Father kills Christine's brother and Senga detonates his last bomb, which kills the father and destroys a large portion of the facility, bringing the events to their conclusion.

Almost

Cast

The Wilsons

The Cultists

Others

Spoilers end here.

Music

Octane's soundtrack features techno, ambient and ambient industrial music by Orbital.

External links

 

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