OtherLife review virtual reality goes bad in ambitious Australian sci-fi thriller – The Guardian

An eye-opening look at the dangers of technology: Jessica De Gouw in OtherLife.

It is not uncommon for films about drug users to contain closeup shots of pupils dilating. This is hardly surprising given closeups of eyes have long been fashionable in cinema; the famous opening of Luis Buuels 1929 classic Un Chien Andalou comes to mind. And after a hit of the good stuff, eyeballs look fabulous on screen, as films like Requiem for a Dream remind us.

Australian writer/director Ben C Lucass sophomore feature, OtherLife, joins the crazy-eyed canon in its opening moments, peppered with near full-screen vision of a narcotic-infused peeper.

Except the drug in question in this low-budget Perth-shot sci-fi movie is arguably not a drug at all. Its inventor Ren (Jessica de Gouw) insists not entirely successfully, especially after an overdose that it is instead biological software.

Once consumed, OtherLife transports users brains into VR-esque settings where they experience all the senses they use in reality. Also, importantly, their grasp of time is expanded, meaning seconds or minutes in real life are experienced as days, months or years inside the users modified mind.

Based in a not-too-distant future, Ren and her business partner Sam (TJ Power) pitch their product as a recreational experience the kind advertised with footage of sun-kissed beaches or majestic snow-tipped mountains.

We never have enough free time, Sam says, reciting a spiel to a bunch of suits in a meeting room. And when we do it feels wasted. He floats the idea of not just buying more time but putting it to all sorts of festive uses: sailing the Caribbean before work, for example, or snowboarding the Alps over lunch.

The technology has its sceptics, and Ren is cautioned about opening Pandoras box. In the lead-up to launch she concedes OtherLife has a glitch (cause of the aforementioned overdose) but downplays it as just bad code. A stern-but-fair university professor (Tiriel Mora) reminds her that the mind is more than a collection of binary switches.

Another cynic opines: A facsimile of an experience youve never had just feels isolating.

This illuminates a theme core to the film, and presumably the book on which it is based, Kelley Eskridges Solitaire: that technology is constructing increasingly lonely worlds for humans to inhabit.

Lucas also philosophised about technology (particularly the use of social media) in his visually striking 2010 debut Wasted on the Young. In a highly memorable scene, the life-or-death fate of one character, a nasty private-school boy, is crowdsourced to fellow smartphone-wielding teenagers as if they were voting in a reality TV competition.

As OtherLife progresses and the pacing warms up, you can sense the shit about to hit a virtually rendered, glitch-prone fan particularly when the government muscles in and proposes alternative applications for the technology. It suggests it could be used as, of all things, a solution to prison overcrowding or, hard time without the time.

The near-future setting, combined with Helen OLoans resourceful, interior-heavy production design, protect the film from extending its sci-fi inclinations beyond the point that can be reasonably achieved within its modest budget. The atmosphere is big but the settings are contained, like Shane Abbess Infini.

And like last years horror indie Observance (another innovative Australian genre film, constructed on an even smaller budget), OtherLifes score and sound design is so striking it is practically a character in the film. All credit to Jed Palmer, who also worked on 2014s delightful The Infinite Man.

Credit also, of course, to Ben C Lucas. With virtual reality devices finally in our lounge rooms and festivals, the film is well timed but I found the excitement of its premise waned a little as the plot progressed. Particularly in the second half, which is partly hinged on finding new applications for already used settings, and has a whiff of Inception-lite about it.

But the tonal consistency with which Lucas brings his ambitious project together will undoubtedly make him an appealing proposition for Hollywood, as it did with Wasted on the Young.

The director is helped along by a darkly charismatic leading performance from Jessica De Gouw who, with her piercing gaze and slightly gothic look and swagger, is a great solidifying force for the cast. Is it her eyes we see in extreme closeup at the start of the film? A question, perhaps, for the director.

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OtherLife review virtual reality goes bad in ambitious Australian sci-fi thriller - The Guardian