This film has two major problems.
1) The first is the faux documentary style. This is an idea that just backfires. The rationalization for the annoying, shaky-cam, cinema-verity style is that a documentary is being made about a character who works at the space agency where much of the drama is set. The problem is that this storytelling frame extends into outer space and even continues long after all the events we're seeing have been declared top secret by the government. It's clearly designed to make the events of the film seem more convincing (we're not watching a science-fiction movie, after all; we're watching documentary footage!) but because what we're seeing so obviously breaks the bounds of anything an actual documentary crew would have had access to, all the conventions of the low-budget documentary (like seldom getting a clear and steady look at anything) just become annoying, and an excuse for inferior production values. Also, the director just didn't get convincing performances out of his actors. I was always aware that I was watching actors trying gamely to sound as if they were in a documentary. They came close, which almost made it worse. The performances ended up falling into some weird uncanny acting valley.
2) The film makes the mistake of introducing a second science-fiction premise about a half hour into the movie--which was just one premise too many for me. The first I can buy into: a wormhole from another part of our galaxy appears in low Earth orbit during what appears to be more or less present-day time. Okay, I can get behind that. We're going to send some probes, and then some astronauts to investigate. Cool. But then there is this long, distracting (and completely unconvincing) diversion into how the would-be explorers of the wormhole have to undergo surgery to have their brains removed and placed into robotic bodies so that they can withstand the gravitational stresses of going through the wormhole. I just found this incredible--and not in a good way. I mean incredible, as in I didn't believe it. I didn't believe that in a world that appears technologically more or less like our own, the military has developed the ability to not only transplant a brain, but read and download thoughts, memories, and motor commands from it.
If gravitational forces threaten to tear apart a human body entering this wormhole, then why would a human brain be spared? It's probably the least robust and most easily discombobulated organ in the human body.
And then--and this is obviously a small nitpick-- as a couple of reviewers here have pointed out, there was this very weird substitution of the made-up word "complexing" when I assume the writer (who was also the film's director and editor--always a red flag) meant "perplexing."
It's a minor gaffe but. . . man it was just bizarre and distracting. Especially because he does it twice!
1) The first is the faux documentary style. This is an idea that just backfires. The rationalization for the annoying, shaky-cam, cinema-verity style is that a documentary is being made about a character who works at the space agency where much of the drama is set. The problem is that this storytelling frame extends into outer space and even continues long after all the events we're seeing have been declared top secret by the government. It's clearly designed to make the events of the film seem more convincing (we're not watching a science-fiction movie, after all; we're watching documentary footage!) but because what we're seeing so obviously breaks the bounds of anything an actual documentary crew would have had access to, all the conventions of the low-budget documentary (like seldom getting a clear and steady look at anything) just become annoying, and an excuse for inferior production values. Also, the director just didn't get convincing performances out of his actors. I was always aware that I was watching actors trying gamely to sound as if they were in a documentary. They came close, which almost made it worse. The performances ended up falling into some weird uncanny acting valley.
2) The film makes the mistake of introducing a second science-fiction premise about a half hour into the movie--which was just one premise too many for me. The first I can buy into: a wormhole from another part of our galaxy appears in low Earth orbit during what appears to be more or less present-day time. Okay, I can get behind that. We're going to send some probes, and then some astronauts to investigate. Cool. But then there is this long, distracting (and completely unconvincing) diversion into how the would-be explorers of the wormhole have to undergo surgery to have their brains removed and placed into robotic bodies so that they can withstand the gravitational stresses of going through the wormhole. I just found this incredible--and not in a good way. I mean incredible, as in I didn't believe it. I didn't believe that in a world that appears technologically more or less like our own, the military has developed the ability to not only transplant a brain, but read and download thoughts, memories, and motor commands from it.
If gravitational forces threaten to tear apart a human body entering this wormhole, then why would a human brain be spared? It's probably the least robust and most easily discombobulated organ in the human body.
And then--and this is obviously a small nitpick-- as a couple of reviewers here have pointed out, there was this very weird substitution of the made-up word "complexing" when I assume the writer (who was also the film's director and editor--always a red flag) meant "perplexing."
It's a minor gaffe but. . . man it was just bizarre and distracting. Especially because he does it twice!