SCI-FI B-MOVIE TRIPLE BILL
I watch sci-fi.
Really into it.
Almost (but not quite) exclusively it's what I watch when I watch a movie. I am more often dissatisfied that I have seen as much of it as I can get my hands on than I am excited about something new coming out. Somehow, these three movies all from 2017 slipped by me un-noticed. It is possible I saw one or more of them and simply forgot. That does happen, what with the custom neural re-wiring (amalgamemory™) I am involved in. So this weekends project is to make reviewing these a mini-project while making 3D architecture in another window. (link to follow)
I am initially visually attracted to Black Hollow Cage and InControl because they both feature the exact same symbolism SMALL BLACK CUBE * with its planetary associations with Saturn which David Icke is warning us about, statues of it existing at all the Illuminati HQ's and real home video footage of black cube spaceships exiting hyperspace in the skies of our planet. I wrote more about this topic HERE.
The third movie in this tryptic MindGamers
is put in there only for comparative purposes with In Control because
it has the same theme. Those are both pet projects wherein the
screen-writer is also the director while BHC has a bigger team.
* NERDGASM: The Black Cube is also mentioned in Frank Herberts Chapter Dune sextet, Darwi Odrade makes a sculpture of it inspired by both Van Gogh's Chaumes de Cordeville à Auvers-sur-Oise and a Dunetech allowing an art appreciator to experience the artist creating the work in the first place (application of every brush stroke and the feelings deciphered from it) although I cannot recall whether it was Heretics of Dune or ChapterHouse Dune.
All copyright images used non-profit, fully accredited, within international fair use policy for educational purposes.
BLACK HOLLOW CAGE (2017)
"Thirteen-year-old
Alice lives with her father in a secluded house in the woods, where one
day she discovers a mysterious device that can send messages through
time."
INCONTROL (2017)
"College kids discover a device that allows them to take control of others and experience the world through someone else's body."
MINDGAMERS (2017)
"Young
bio-engineers discover that quantum theory can be used to transfer motor
skills from one brain to another. As the technology spreads, dark
forces emerge and threaten to subvert their technology into a means of
mass control."
Initial release: 28 March 2017 (USA)
MY REVIEWS
BLACK HOLLOW CAGE
theme: isolation, individual internal, learning to trust,
A soon to be teenage girl undergoing extreme difficulties with self image and all the emotional mental conflict occurring with that. She is being trained in a remote research facility albeit a homely one, to use a prosthetic arm which reacts to the thought alone without being hardwired to her neuro-system.
When she discovers the black cube in the woods, a host of symbolism ensues, unanswered questions. The box opens and provides her with a slip of paper upon which is a handwritten note. Back in the safety of her own living space, she copies the note and recognizes it to be exactly the same as her handwriting. She has written this to herself, somehow.
There is a dreamlike quality to this film. We are faced with the suspension of disbelief. A sense of wonder. Is it more probable that some alien technology involving time travel or the ability to translate her thoughts into a material object with the properties of handwriting? Her companion who she calls mother is a dog fitted with a speaker device which translates brainwaves to human speech so she can talk with it. All of the technologies in the film suggest that the black cube could also be another technology created by the same laboratory.
The other possibility is that the forest is her mind assimilating all of her experiences; the black box is a fiction of her imagination as she does so. We are unsure whether to believe the black box to be a literal thing or a metaphorical device within the context of the storytelling. This same applies to the other technologies which within the context of the storytelling we are expected to believe are real within her universe. There is nothing to determine or even to suggest that one technology should be real while the other fictional. Indeed, from my own researches I know as a fact that the mind-to-voice technology fitted onto animals already exists.
There is a sense of foreboding and paranoia in the film. Not only towards the father figure but also towards the unexpected visitors who, like the black box emerged mysteriously in the forest and have had an affect on the daily lives of the people living in the house in the woods. The little girl, her dog/mother are afraid of all the other humans. If the black box is symbolism for her subconscious mind, it explains why the message on the note contains those specific words.
There is the sense of games being played, mind games; in the same sense as the psychopath in a horror movie toys with her victims. Here, most of the characters are children apparently as lost in the woods as the main protagonist. The opening scene clearly showed the father figure being brutally murdered, that’s invoking a sense of anxiety. It is unclear whether that is a dream sequence or that the rest of the movie is a flashback sequence leading up to that inevitable event.
So far the movie is about a little girl facing your fear where the relationship between individual and other people inclusive of those wearing animal bodies versus individual and technology. The girl trusts her speaking dog, she trusts mysterious dark objects found in the woods, but she does not trust the people. The one called father, she violently proclaims to hate during a tuition session where they both become angry with each others obstinacy.
Then it transpires at the end of chapter 2 during a heated argument between father and girl, that he murdered the mother and the dog is not actually her mother. The spots of explosive argument between these two breaks up the long quiet calm of the forest.
The other two decide to stay because the old guy likes the young girl, he comforts her in a scene where he stroked her hair and there is blood all over the wall. The main protagonists envy of the girl is evident but we have no idea tall of the relationship between father and the new girl. The new girls brother just watches, usually with no T-shirt on.
I really don’t know what the point of watching any more of this movie is because quite frankly it boring and toxic.
INCONTROL
theme: Remote Electronic Mind Control
theme: Remote Electronic Mind Control
She is heavy breathing.
Women heavy breathing means either sex or panic.
Sometimes exertion/exhaustion too.
All three of these are summarized by various levels of; thrill.
All three are vulnerable, states of openess.
Opening scene, the middle of nowhere, a blonde woman crying for help into her phone, most certainly she is not in control. Will she become a Sarah Conner / Eleanor Ripley by the end of the movie?
Visual image of an exotic looking computer chip in a small foam lined case, straight out of ShadowRun. She speaks into Marks answerphone: "I don't know whats going on."
She is not the best actress, certainly not the same league as aforementioned feminist idol superheroines. To be expected from a lower budget movie than those so it is unfair to compare. The tone of her voice sounds like she is acting, more than it sounds like she genuinely
The viewer is being asked to suspend disbelief and flow with her narrative.
Unsure what level to accept that at.
Is she a femme fatale or a damsel in distress?
What are we being introduced to here? The computer chip means big business means murders and conspiracy. It feels stolen or that she is its creator, on the run from murderous thieves. The viewer projects this because it is standard fare for these situations. Conjecture. Or am I cynical? The necessity to keep an open mind and accept her narrative for the story to make sense as a reality, bypasses all of that.
We are being programmed. Clearly, all the symbolism works on several levels to establish this.
Then blah blah cut to a scene with a mansplaining young professor type and a different blond girl, jogging. Next scene, next layer of onion ring, same symbolism. Blonde woman running. She happens to be the exact clone copy of a college girl I shared an interesting bedroom scene with in my late teens.
Now I am suspending my disbelief because this has suddenly gotten personal: barb 1.
But this girl, she does not contact two unavailable people on answerphone asking for help, instead she looks at two happy people (equivalents) and is more insular. Close-up shot of her body language 'accepting something internally'. She uses a computer (same symbol as "the chip" in previous onion layer), but is not doing so well in her college assignment (C- grade for her essay, the lowest possible 'pass').
Basic insect level coding. It works. That chip symbol is powerful.
Perhaps now is the time to explain that the first blonde girl, the lost one, followed up during what I described as 'blah blah' by wrecking her car; flipping it over on the only other object in the middle of nowhere which just so happened to be a perfectly placed ramp, the sort always found lying around on roadsides in the middle of nowhere.
The young lecturer guy was talking about how mobile communication technologies have resulted in a generation who do not understand 'being alone' the way the older generations did. Nowhere is dangerous. You flip cars over there and probably die.
[break time]
"Panopticon. It plays on the idea that if you believe you are being watched, you behave differently. It was a prison design. All the prisoners were around it, there was a guard in the middle that would monitor, but; none of the prisoners knew who was being watched." Samantha
Panopticon: strangely the name of a band I was in during my twenties and a series of graphic novels produced as a tie-in (Panopticomics). Suspension of disbelief getting personal: barb 2.
"If there were no consequences, what would you do differently? If no-one was watching?" Mark
"As you say." He added; throwing the perception back into her court by emphasizing: these are her words and she is self-responsible for her own decision making. These intelligent characters adept at a form of deflection which highlights the other persons sense of importance. The story so far is underlaying these layers of perception.
Wait a minute ... is this the same Mark from scene one who car-crash-blond left a desperate message on his answerphone? This time he answers his phone despite it not ringing, explaining to whoever the scans came back fine.
Since the movie has made this personal twice, arguably three times by working on these planes: I feel both permitted and objectively obligated to take a liberty of inserting my own personal dogma here:
The Creed
Accountability is Credibility.
Responsibility is Respectability.
Samantha receives parking ticket. Not having much luck with their vehicles, these blondes. She goes home. Mark calls. He has been thinking about what she was saying. There is something she should come and see.
Jenny's place. Mark and Jenny introduce Sam to Victor the confident college drop out. They have all heard about her prison essay. In Jenny's room is a BLACK CUBE with cables coming out from beneath it. Victor stole it from the university two months ago, because obviously universities justy ahppen to have stuff like that laying around unguarded without the general public being aware it even exists. Jenny is brunette and is hooked up to it like sleeping beauty.
"She's very much awake." Mark
"Some sort of virtual..." Samantha
"It's a little more complicated." Mark
"she's hooked up to this thing, and she's what?" Samantha
"She's somebody else." Victor
Mark turns to Samantha and says; "Jenny."
Samantha writes on a piece of paper: Hi Sam. It's me, Jenny.
Samantha steps back, reads the paper in her hands.
"What the hell? You did that?" Samantha
"No. You did." Victor
"There's something called 'taking a ride' we like to do to get to know somebody." Mark
"You can just go along. How they're feeling can affect your judgement. How they hear, see, feel things. Just focus on where you want to go. The person has to be nearby that you hone in on. Your mind will do the rest. There are certain limitations. Like, its still you in there. You can't look back on what they know, there's no control of memory." Mark
I told you: this is ShadowRun.
From this point onward, the movie can become any number of potential story lines.
Samantha tests the technology. We see a girl sitting at her family dinner table feeling really weird, and a guy resumed father asks if she is alright because her mannerisms change as Samantha takes over.
"You have to remember that these people think they are choosing to do what you make them do. Its not them you have to worry about, its the people around them, their friends, their family." Mark
"So they think they're making the decisions you make." Samantha
"People tend to justify their own actions above anything else. It's surprisingly hard to break. Try it on your own sometime, you'll find yourself doing pretty much everything on impulse." Mark
The group of four psychonauts discuss next sex and riding on the other gender's body. It's pretty much what they mostly get up to with the amazing device. Wouldn't you?
I'm a leave writing any more for this movie review right here.
"The essay is supposed to relate the panopticon as a theory to our modern society, that we behave differently because of possible surveillance, or influence of higher power." Samantha
MINDGAMERS
theme: collective consciousness, control,
theme: collective consciousness, control,
Researching available screenshots in google I recognized that I did already see this movie. It is stylish and confusing. It deserves to be a series, to give it space to develop characters and ideas more, without unnecessary filler but to do justice to the great ideas it contains. It's very theatrical with more budget spent on sets and hiring reknowned actors to add merit, rather than innovative script because being a sci-fi fan I have seen this movie already in various guises a bunch of times.
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| screenshot from MindGamers: black cube symbology |
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| Vincent Van Gogh: Cottages At Cordeville-Auvers-Sur-Oise |
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