PHASE IV (1974)
2001: A Space Odyssey meets Them!, Saul Bass’s Phase IV sees the humble ant granted cryptic intelligence through a vague series of cosmological adjustments. From the beginning of the film, extreme close-up sequences depicting ant activity impose upon us a world to which we ordinarily have only the most limited awareness and access, both physically and visually. Yet here our knowledge of this unique perspective, so removed from our own, intensifies the conflict between us and “them” as the ultra-organized ants range themselves against other earthly inhabitants, especially humans. The strange events begin in the US desert, and a duo of scientists, entrenched in a high-tech base of their own design, begin various experiments to solve the riddle of this mysterious ant-agonism (sorry). Ostensibly a thriller, but with little to pound the pulse, Phase IV’s virtue is rather its engrossingly moody visual mode and the creeping sense of the uncanny to which it gives rise. 4 / 5
It's all done with mirrors 