Concrete Elysium

With not much to do during a weekend of awful weather, I decided to sniff around my old computer discs. I remember having this one disc in which I kept old videos I made with friends a decade ago. I am pretty sure they were awful. I wanted to see just how bad they were. The so-called skits we made were pretty bad. Let me rephrase it; they were horrendous. The only funny thing about these old videos is how we thought we were there. I mean, the jokes were pretty good – the execution is bloody awful. There are some gaming recordings and animation videos I’ve made. These were pretty good. I’m surprised just how good I was at that. I guess I could’ve become an animator with a bit more professional training. Anyway, I digress.

Along with the hundreds of childhood passion projects in this folder was one video that stuck out like a sore thumb. It was titled, “Concrete Elysium”. Now it stuck out because I didn’t make this video. There was no doubt about it. I didn’t even know the word Elysium ten years ago. I must’ve downloaded it or something, which is likely because other videos in this folder were also downloaded. I have no clue how they got in this folder; I remember organizing everything into separate files even back then. Either way, my curiosity is piqued, and I’ve decided to check out the long-forgotten file.

It was some short film, fifty minutes long from start to finish, with the credits and all. At first glance, it looked like an amateur project. You wouldn’t think otherwise if you saw the opening graphic. The term “S.h.i.t Production” was displayed on the screen in a lazy comic sans font. The title was drifting across the screen before turning into “Some Horribly Idiotic Tool’s Production." Admittedly, I found that introductory screen funny. The screen went black after that image for a couple of seconds before the screen turned to someone that was filming the entrance to some cottage somewhere. Someone hooded walked in front of the cameraman, and they didn’t speak for the duration of their walk towards the cottage. It didn't take long for them to reach the cottage. Once the hooded person opened the door, he exclaimed, “Welcome to the Elysian Fields,” before stepping inside. The cameraman followed closely behind. He entered a room which was heavily clouded by thick smoke. The audio was filled with the sound of loud coughing. So much so it felt as if people were coughing right beside me.

The hooded person signaled the cameraman to follow him, and the pair made their way to a room filled with people laying all over the floor. I counted eleven of them. The cameraman just filmed the bunch just lying there, motionless for about thirty seconds before they all started twitching and withering uncontrollably. They were spasming and rolling all over the floor uncontrollably. So much so that they were rolling over each other. It made me feel somewhat uncomfortable. I was trying to pick out what sort of film this was meant to be, but it didn’t fit neatly into any category. I like horror, but this didn't seem like it. God forbid it was a snuff film, I thought. The last thing I needed was to keep one of these on a CD. Yes, I’ve seen a few – they’re not hard to come by. In fact, snuff is all over the internet, it even slips onto platforms like Facebook on occasion.

That being said, I kept on watching the peculiar video. The figures on the floor were having some sort of disturbing collective epileptic fit. Something similar to World War I vets with shell shock. It had this atmospheric awfulness to it. I was going to turn the video off and wanted to delete it; it was just a little too weird. After a while, much to my relief, the withering figures started laughing. I guess they broke character or something.

Whatever this was, it had at least some professional backbone.

From there on, the cameraman went on alone. For the rest of the film, he was walking around the various rooms of the cottage recording whatever he found. The first room he went to was a dimly lit room with a single light bulb hanging at its center. A group of children dressed in all white circled the source of the light without saying a word.

The cameraman waved his hand in front of the camera lens, and the video turned black and white. He kept on filming the children circling the light bulb. Something about the black and white setting made the whole thing seem far worse than I expected it to be. Things took a turn for the worse when the children suddenly stopped walking and turned their heads in unison towards the cameraman. Then they did something even creepier; they started waving their hands at him in total sync. It made my skin crawl. The cameraman said something to the children, something inaudible, before walking out of the room and proceeding to walk towards another room.

Now, this room had its door slightly open. The cameraman pushed the door open carefully with one of his hands. It was deliberate, probably in order to create some sort of a dramatic feel to the scene. It didn’t work out, given that he stepped into a bathroom with someone inside. Their back turned to him. Now that I think about it, though, that was probably on purpose given what was about to happen. The person inside that bathroom was doing something in front of the mirror. You couldn't see what it was. The operator then yelled out, “Hey!” and the person turned around.

It scared the living hell out of me.

A face full of what I assume was makeup which was meant to look like facial musculature. That presentation definitely worked on me. It was so sudden and realistic enough to make me believe the person had flayed their face off. Especially because they had a piece of wet leather in one of their arms and a knife in the other. The cameraman ran out of the room and up a set of stairs. I could hear him breathing heavily, which I assume was acting.

Good job to whoever made this, I was already terrified and anxious by the whole thing.

However, that wasn’t the end of it. The cameraman steadied his arms and turned the camera sharply. In doing so, I was faced with a noose swaying softly in the middle of a hallway. The bastard had to zoom in on the thing. I don’t even know why it made me feel so awful. My heart started beating at full speed for some reason. I guess it was the atmosphere of the whole thing which was nearing its ending. By then the video was at the ten-minute mark. I decided I would finish watching the thing. It couldn’t get much worse than that.

The cameraman walked along the hallway, aiming his camera at the various rooms. There were four rooms on each side. All rooms on one side were open and empty for the most part. There was some sort of broken-down furniture in each of them. The operator made sure to display each room thoroughly. I’m not sure why, but they probably did it to distract the viewers from the previous scene. Something tells me whoever made this video knew full well just how effective this bathroom scene was. It’s one of the best so-called gore scenes I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen real-life snuff before!

At this point, I became convinced it was definitely a professional film, one that self acknowledges on top of everything.

Anyway, after giving the viewers a tour of the empty rooms, he turned to the other side of the hall. Where he opened a door of a peculiarly lit room. There was some light emanating from one wall. That was a nice twist for once, a nice visual and the only pleasant part of the whole film. The light was showering a tall, sickeningly lanky, clearly anguished ballerino. He was attempting to dance. His face contorted in pain with each step he took. The cameraman zoomed in on his face and you could see tears staining his cheeks. Whatever this was, the commitment to the act was incredible. Either that, or it was one of those actors who can cry on cue. Even so, the whole thing felt authentic and oddly creepy. Especially the faces the ballerino was making towards the latter part of that scene. I wasn’t too keen on this scene; it definitely pulled a heart string. I was glad when the cameraman turned his camera towards the floor and made his way out of that room.

From there he made his way to the final room he was about to film; the video was at about twelve minutes. The cameraman kept the camera aimed at the floor as he walked into the final room. It took him twenty seconds or so, as he was walking deliberately slowly. You could see him pushing a door open before walking inside and saying something inaudible again. Followed by two feminine voices speaking. After that, he lifted his camera and started filming what quickly turned out to be a bed covered in cockroaches. The operator said something again, and two women stepped into the frame. He said something again, and the women proceeded to get onto the bed.

My stomach turned as the women just let the disgusting creatures crawl all over them. They were all smiles and giggles as the insects covered them from head to toe. Oddly enough, their eyes seemed hollow and distant. The cameraman was saying something, and the tone of his speech made me glad I couldn't understand what he was saying. From there on, just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, my disgust turned into anxiousness when the sound of a crying woman permeated the scene. Crying and choking, to be more specific. I felt as if I had been submerged into freezing ocean water once the operator turned his camera. In the center of his frame sat a third woman on a wooden chair with her back to him. The sound of crying mixed with choking grew louder, almost to the degree that I could hear it next to me. For a hot second, I thought I could hear it behind me. That’s when the strangest thing happened. A slender, serpentine thing came out of where the woman’s head was as the sounds of choking intensified. The recording ended a couple of moments later when this serpentine thing appeared to be a hand that ended up blocking the camera lens. Everything turned black abruptly but, the video wasn’t over yet. The audio of a person vomiting flooded my speakers for about fifteen seconds. I felt myself getting sick as I heard that. Luckily for me, the noise died down and the video shifted to credits which were just as amateurish as the opening sequence.

I sat there, for a good ten minutes afterward, just staring at my video player app, trying to rationalize what on earth I had just seen. I couldn’t make any sense of it myself. So, I ended up looking up the film. What was supposed to be a quick search turned into a two-hour hunt for information about this Concrete Elysium. All I could find were a few passing mentions in some old and obscure forums nobody even uses anymore. Apparently, it was made in Sweden in the early nineties, and nobody knows who the participants were or what was the purpose of the film. I couldn’t find any copies or links to the film, sadly. I did find one forum thread which details how allegedly the whole thing was some sort of a cult ritual. According to that thread, the owner of the cottage rented it to a group of young adults for a couple of days. When he came back to collect the keys, he found the property unlocked, with no one inside. He also apparently found bloody puke stains in one of the rooms and bloody hand prints all over the window in the same room. Personally, I don’t believe that story. To me, it seems like someone tried to capitalize on the mood of the film to generate some buzz online. Either that or the makers of the film tried to generate some interest in their project with a bigger backstory.

If you know anything about Concrete Elysium, let me know. I’m genuinely interested in learning more. There has to be something more to this whole thing. I don’t know what it is, but I’d like to find out. While it’s disturbingly weird and at points outright terrifying, it’s also morbidly enticing. All in all, if you ever find the movie and don’t have an iron stomach, do yourself the favor don’t watch it.