Empathy Inc. Cert: CERT / 15 mins / Dir. Yedidya Gorsetman / Trailer
If you could walk a mile in someone else's shoes, would you be a better person once you were back in your own? That's the question posed at the top of Yedidya Gorsetman's Empathy Inc., the sci-fi thriller originally made in 2017, given a US theatrical release in 2019 and now landing in the UK on Blu-ray and digital platforms from Arrow Films.
After losing his cushy Silicon Valley job when a project fails its testing phase, crestfallen tech entrepreneur Joel (Zack Robidas) moves with his wife Jessica (Kathy Searle) to her parents suburban home. Eager to restore his reputation, Joel stumbles across an old contact Nicolaus (Eric Berryman), who is the PR-front for a new startup with tech-whizz Lester (Jay Klaitz).
The eponymous Empathy Inc. has developed Extreme Virtual Reality - XVR - a combination of digital and pharmaceutical technology which drops its subject into a startlingly realistic simulation of someone else's life. Joel tries it once and is utterly convinced of the product. He then inveigles his way into his in-law's savings for a cool million dollars, soon seeing handsome returns on the investment. But despite Joel's excitement, Nicolaus and Lester remain more tight-lipped than ever over the project's actual mechanics. To make matters worse Joel starts to experience gaps in his own memory, and an already tense home-life is further soured when it appears that the investment has been lost. But the truth of the matter is more incredible than any of them could have guessed, as Joel and Jessica are about to find out...
TIPPING Director Yedidya Gorsetman and writer Mark Leidner collaborated on 2014's Jammed (as well as 2019's Same Boat), and there's a reassuring coherence throughout Empathy Inc. as a potentially convoluted story is laid out clearly without tipping over into spoon-feeding. Full credit goes to the players for keeping pace with the creative vision for an escalating pantomime of paranoia, which still manages to emotionally convince in the heights of its ridiculousness.
The film is presented in high-contrast monotone which, for what is clearly a very low budget movie, lends a definitive veneer of class which would probably otherwise be missing. Considering its narrative roots in computer science, this is a deliciously lo-fi sci-fi flick. Some of the props are purposely held together with duct-tape, while other aspects are kept artfully off-screen. Like any good conjuring trick we don't see how the magic works, it's enough to know that it does. Gorsetman relies on the imagination of the audience and the acting skills of the cast, a gambit which pays off surprisingly well. While this doesn't necessarily feel 'stagey', Empathy Inc. is analogue enough to the point where it would work equally well onstage as a live production, as evidenced by its neat framing device.
MATCH And yet... at its heights, Empathy Inc. evokes the spirits of The Matrix, Being John Malkovich and the seminal Primer. All of which feels like a healthy stylistic pedigree until one realises that those well-dissected works surfaced over a decade and a half ago. The themes explored here are as relevant as ever - as is the methodology - but their delivery in the format of a feature film already seems dated.
The script is clinical in some areas and vague in others; important plot setups are skirted over in the first act even though they're referred to later, and the full potential of the XVR product isn't fully explored. With not quite enough detail to fill out the run-time, this has the feeling of a short prose story which would have been better adapted to an hour-long televisual format.
As a seed for thought, Empathy Inc. has a lot going for it; that's just probably not quite enough.
VANTAGE The Blu-ray edition comes with a commentary track from director Yedidya Gorsetman and writer Mark Leidner, as well as trailers, a behind the scenes reel and deleted scenes. These weren't available on our review-copy but if the film itself is to go by they should make for an intriguing accompaniment to the movie.
Empathy Inc. feels far from outstanding, yet it's a solid achievement and has a sense of its own identity (somewhat ironically) which many mainstream tech-thrillers lack. As a stepping-stone to greater things for its creators, this is perhaps one to appreciate rather than outright enjoy...
Think of a more accessible Primer.
You're unlikely to get the chance outside of the convention-circuit, but it'd be interesting to watch on a big screen.
This is, with the best will in the world, a streamer.
I can't make that call.
That's possible.
There isn't.
Level 2: This stars Zack Robidas, who was in the 'Worst Behaviour' episode of Marvel's The Defenders with Jessica 'Pava' Henwick and Rosario 'Rumoured to Be The Upcoming Live-Action Ahsoka Tano' Dawson.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
All work and no play makes Ian Blackout a dull boy. Ian Blackout is arguably a dull boy to begin with of course (to which regular readers of this blog will attest), but still. In the middle of March 2020, cinemas in the UK finally (and rightly) closed their doors in the face of a burgeoning global pandemic; no more details of that are required in this missive, I'm sure.
Of course for a blog which exists almost solely to review the movies its proprietor has watched at the cinema, this is the equivalent of backing it into a garage, putting it up on blocks, removing the wheels and waiting for the dust to gather. World of Blackout reviews some films at home, but not many. I like the structure of the theatrical experience. If I preferred doing it in my living room, that's what the blog would be to begin with. But I digress.
Now I was (and am) lucky enough to have a job which, for the most part, can be performed from home. It's far from ideal, but it is possible. But since it takes longer from the kitchen table, and since the remainder of the activities have to be performed from the office while it's deserted at weekends, this has resulted in far less free time than I'd have had normally. Woe is me, I know. Not complaining, that's just how it is.
Anyway, the knock-on effect of this is that my 'to-watch list' has barely budged at all over the last month, as even when I find myself at a loose end and craving escapist distraction, I don't have the concentration or enthusiasm to appreciate it properly anyway.
With this in mind, I've taken to watching entries on the macabre-pile (quickly developing a Lovecraft theme, some of which I've seen before, many of which I haven't) and committing to nothing more than micro-reviews on the blog's social media platforms. And there still aren't many of these, but I present them here in a round-up form as a means of completion and continuity. And let's face it, to have something to post this month.
World Of Blackout will return in earnest as soon as the cinemas do*1...
IN FABRIC (2019)
Cert: 15 / 119 mins / Dir. Peter Strickland
Boy, I wish I'd enjoyed this more. In Fabric makes me realise how spoiled we've been with the works of Gatiss, Shearsmith, Pemberton and Dyson. There are seeds of absolute brilliance, but they're left untended in a sprawling, unsatisfying story that looks darkly beautiful but feels like it's been written by someone who doesn't know how it should end...
I've watched In The Mouth Of Madness before. I don't remember it being great, but I certainly remember it being better. The film's heart is in the right place and I won't fault the ambition, but Carpenter is a very literal director, so concerned here with heavy-handed tropes that he can't tell (or doesn't care) when his cast veer between under- and over-acting. Check out the Twitter-thread for the full, visually-assisted, list of gripes...
Owing as much to Raimi and Cronenberg as Lovecraft, Color Out Of Space is cheap trash masquerading as ponderous invasion-horror. Contains Cage-heavy notes of Mom And Dad and Mandy, both of which are more fun and more focused. Reproducing the eponymous, indefinable, indescribably alien hue was always going to be tricky in a visual medium where questions have to be answered. Anyway, turns out it was fuchsia...
Yes, if you can't be outright scary or even macabre, aim for 'camp as a row of tents' instead. There's more of The Love God? than Lovecraft about this, but it's good kitsch fun if you're in the right mood. The cinematography, production design, direction and haphazard continuity of The Dunwich Horror just makes me want to watch The Love Witch and Garth Marenghi again, which suggests I enjoyed this film for precisely the wrong reasons...
If 2009's iteration of The Dunwich Horror was a no-budget fan film or someone's A-Level project, it'd be more than acceptable. But y'know. It wasn't, it wasn't and it isn't. You might think it would be inherently wrong to retool Lovecraft with Indy-style relic hunting, and you'd be absolutely right. But props to Dean Stockwell for delivering his lines here with a straight face and absolutely no shame...
DAGON (2001)
Cert: 18 / 98 mins / Dir. Stuart Gordon
It's a surprisingly nasty little horror which moves at a cracking pace with great tension and solid effects-work, but a cast running the full gamut of acting styles from 'Ikea' to 'enthusiastic am-dram'. A zombie-flick by any other name, Dagon works far better than many others on its shelf. Not stylish enough to be one of the all-time greats, but since when did students of #HPLovecraft worry about being cool?
Utterly Glorious. Clears the hurdle of 'filming the un-filmable' by embracing an era of cinema when visual economy was king, shining with unconditional love for its subject while retaining an air of arch fun. One of the purest examples in recent times of art existing in commercial form, but purely for the sake of art. The Call Of Cthulhu is an analogue passion-project for a digital age...
If this recent season has illustrated anything, it's that Lovecraft works best in cinema when he's not so much adapted as transcribed and embellished. The style of The Whisperer In Darkness may be of the 1930s, but paranoia is timeless. The film probably looks more 'clean' than it should, but is meticulous in its joy for film noir and early sci-fi. What's more, it's also a fantastic movie in its own right, keen to savour every last frame of uncanny dread...
*1 Although given the re-opening will be by necessity somewhat staggered and that the global release market is currently in a state of utter upheaval and re-scheduling, I dread to think a) what new content there will be to watch, b) what sanitised, crowd-pleasing, back-catalogue filler will be shown alongside it, and c) what the level of etiquette will be amongst patrons who didn't know how to behave in a public space before being cooped up with a minimum of physical human contact for weeks on end.
It'll either be really quiet in the cinemas, or ridiculously busy. One of those is ideal for me, the other is ideal for the businesses themselves. C'est la vie. Things will even out in the long-run, I have no doubt, but prepare for more complaining from the heights of Blackout Towers until it does. Which I imagine you already were, anyway...[ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
The Mandalorian Cert: 12A / 60 mins*1 / Dir. Dave Filoni / Trailer
And so my last cinema visit for who-knows-how-long turned out to be a trip to the Galaxy Far, Far Away, which is some manner of muted send-off at least. As part of the promo-push for the UK's Disney+ streaming-service launch on March 24, Cineworld teamed up to show the first episode of the first live-action Star Wars series, The Mandalorian*2.
And good lord does this look fantastic on a big screen. Cinematically, it's is pretty much indistinguishable from its movie-cousins (although that's admittedly par for the course with feature-television in 2020 anyway). This episode (and even the first season as a whole) doesn't cover 'all' of the feel of classic Star Wars, but it gets the Space Western aesthetic bang-on. This is something which, admittedly, has been missing from the GFFA for some time (well, for non-Clone Wars viewers, at least*3). There's a gritty, tactile feel here, the run-down desolation of Solo only with better lighting. Lucasfilm's emphasis on physical (foreground) sets gives this the rough-and-ready feel of Tatooine, of things built and weathered and hoisted onto a soundstage at the last minute to make the perfect shot.
WITH NO NAME Pedro Pascal's eponymous protagonist is a Man With No Name for the Star Wars universe, even moreso than the legendary Boba Fett. A man of few words he's far from the top of the game here, but we see our anti-hero develop as time goes on; learning from mistakes as much as success. And who'd have thought we'd end up with Werner freakin' Herzog as a bling-sporting badass of the Imperial Remnant, Carl freakin' Weathers dishing out jobs in the Bounty Hunters' Guild while Nick freakin' Nolte becomes a fount of wisdom and patience riding atop a lizard first introduced in 1985's Battle For Endor TV movie??
Because perhaps most interestingly, The Mandalorian has become a wildly successful Star Wars property even though (in this first episode, at least*4) it utilises completely new characters and locations. Species and organisations are carried over of course, but everyone we meet here is for the first time. The show doesn't necessarily challenge the viewer, but neither does it spoon-feed with callbacks and obvious fan-service. Quite remarkable, and no less than we'd expect from director Dave Filoni.
WITHOUT HATS The only downside to all this is the relative low-key nature of the overall release. Because of the necessary secrecy surrounding The Child™, and the noticeable gaps that one's absence would create by omission in advance marketing material, we've got a Star Wars property arriving on screens without the toys. Without the books. Without the comics. With an absolute bare minimum of behind-the-scenes material. We can be thankful at least for Ludwig Göransson's masterful score hitting the streams, while b-list merchandisers fall over themselves to slap stickers of Baby Yoda on lunchboxes faster than you can say distribution-networks-disrupted-by-a-global-pandemic. But I digress.
This is a very, very good thing.
But then, you knew I'd say that.
The Mandalorian is taking its first step into a larger world; television that looks like cinema while it expands an entire galaxy. This is the way.
The 'Western' elements of A New Hope.
Other than tonight's screening, this is a Disney+ affair, so small-screen only.
Stream definitely, but fans of physical media are sure to be pining for the hard-copy and its associated supplementary material already.
Difficult to say, some very strong talent, here.
I have opinions about this, so that's possible.
There bloody isn't.
Level 0: It is Star Wars
...but if you wanted to go around the houses with it, The Mandalorian features Mr Nick Nolte, who was in 2011's Warrior with Joel Edgerton, who also cropped up in Gringo alongside David Oyelowo, who appears in the upcoming Peter Rabbit 2 next to Domhnall Gleeson, star of About Time in which his mum was played by Lindsay Duncan, who rocked up in 2016's Alice Through The Looking Glass, as did Geraldine James, who starred in the 2011 remake of Arthur with... Nick Nolte.
*1 Y'know what, the Cineworld website said "60 minutes". Now obviously the first chapter of The Mandalorian is only 38 minutes long, but once you add the trailer for Black Widow beforehand (even though you wouldn't normally), a Disney+ promo-reel, the 4-5 minute Mando featurette afterward plus a trailer for the final Clone Wars season, it's probably just under the hour mark all-in. Naturally I'd hoped we'd get chapters 1 and 2 of The Mandalorian back to back, like the Disney promo-machine put out for the Inhumans series, alas no. Still, it's at least nice to know that part of my dreams can come true... [ BACK ]
*2 Although truth be told, I'm not entirely sure how effective a promotion is by making it an Unlimited-exclusive. Surely a better way of getting a taster of The Mandalorian to a wider audience (the actual point of all this) would have been by making it a public screening, like that Inhumans one? I'm not complaining of course, but if this had turned up on Odeon's Limitless card instead, I'd be a bit peeved. [ BACK ]
*3 And while the cinema wasn't exactly packed for obvious reasons, the trailer for the long-awaited and final season of the animated Clone Wars show which played after The Mandalorian saw a succession of punters standing, putting on their coats and sidling to the exit. They did not give a solitary hoot about The Clone Wars. Without wanting to be too snobby, this underlined that the majority of the audience here were Unlimited card-holders, rather than excitable Star Wars fans... [ BACK ]
*4 Because without going into the hows-and-whys, of course I'd seen all of the episodes before I sat down in the cinema to watch this a week ahead of its UK TV debut. Truth be told, I can count on one hand the Star Wars fans I know who hadn't watched it by then. But international licensing agreements and associated release-scheduling are another subject for another time. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
The Hunt Cert: 15 / 90 mins / Dir. Craig Zobel / Trailer
It's not that I never thought I'd see the time when we got three Blumhouse movies within a three week span, more that I never expected that trio to be good with it. Although truth be told, it's also the third Blumhouse movie that's a rehash of older material, but hey. After all of The Controversy (I won't link to that), Craig Zobel's The Hunt is essentially a class-flipped Purge for the binary times in which we find ourselves. A disparate, all-ages gathering of stereotypical, right-wing 'rednecks' find themselves drugged, abducted, and awakened in rural countryside as they become prey to a select lodge of strangely amoral, gun-toting liberals*1. Furnished with a selection of weapons to give the hunt more of a sporting edge, it quickly becomes apparent that the odds are not in their favour.
Make no mistake, The Hunt is not subtle and it is not trying to be subtle. Nowhere near as archly provocative as its knee-jerk critics would have you believe, this is the cinematic equivalent of shitposting and is best enjoyed as a grotesque comedy where the lines between left, right, wrong and right aren't so much blurred as smeared in blood then pounded with a baseball bat. And while it's easy to dismiss this as lazy, keep in mind that writers Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse were behind HBO's recent Watchmen series; they can do nuance and intrigue, that's just not what this is about.
What's initially interesting is that the film doesn't build up any sense of mystery for its audience. The kidnapping setup is pretty much explained in the first five minutes, and the victims themselves work it out within ten. At first it seems like this could be a new approach in order to explore other angles of the story, then the pacing of the action itself gives away that this is so we can cut to the chase much more quickly*2. With eleven subjects released into the woodland to fight for survival, characters are introduced and despatched in very short order. Some of the injuries that people walk away from here are delightfully unhinged, but rest assured that there's always another danger around the corner.
As we power through the movie, its third act sees something of a slowdown as a metric ton of exposition is shovelled in (for the most part, needlessly), but there's still enough dark humour to just about earn the change of pace. Not least because by that point there are fewer players to kill off. Besides, it's all scene-setting for a gloriously climactic showdown. But the bottom line is that The Hunt is more concerned with gleefully spraying claret than making moral judgements, and is all the better for that. A massive amount of fun...
Level 2: Betty Gilpin is in this, and she was in Stuber along with Iko 'Quin-Fee' Uwais.
*1 Upon seeing the trailer a couple of months ago, my first thought wasn't so much The Purge as 'hang on, isn't this a bit like that shonky old Hauer/Busey thriller from the mid 90s?'. Then I looked more into that and realised these are just two adaptations of the 1924 novel, The Most Dangerous Game. And when you see just how many times that's been translated to the screen, you've got to figure that one more go can't hurt. [ BACK ]
*2 90 minutes, including credits; an almost unheard of runtime in this day and age, and the minutes saved on story-building are very much put into the action scenes instead. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
If you could walk a mile in someone else's shoes, would you be a better person once you were back in your own? That's the question posed at the top of Yedidya Gorsetman's Empathy Inc., the sci-fi thriller originally made in 2017, given a US theatrical release in 2019 and now landing in the UK on Blu-ray and digital platforms from Arrow Films.
And so my last cinema visit for 
It's not that I never thought I'd see the time when we got 