Cinema City 2011.
More so than recalling Hitchcock, who established the technique of the dolly zoom in Vertigo more than half a century ago, VERTIGO RUSH is reminiscent of the clever perception experiments of New American Cinema of the 1960s, especially Michael Snow’s structuralist space and movement studies, one of which would also provide an apt name: Back and Forth. The apparently simple basic situation develops genuine cinematographic impact: While the pure tone soundtrack constantly increases in frequency—at first subliminally, soon thumping nervously—the space expands and condenses as though digitally animated while the virtually uncontrollable play of daylight leaves behind its (documentary) traces even in this system of strict cinematic regulation. With the increase in speed (and the onset of darkness) in the second part of the film, the pictorial space narrows to a nocturnal shock corridor. VERTIGO RUSH flows into a pure frenzy of distorted perspective in the controlled intoxication of speed: the serene velocity of the mechanical gaze unleashed.
(Stefan Grissemann)