Anti Matter

I have said before that if I had a dollar for every "auteur" indie (where the writer and director were one and the same) that aimed for the stars but kept hitting the floor, well, I could retire.

But for every dozen or so indies that hit a brick wall, one soars. This is the one that soars.

Indeed it aims high, turning what looks like a basic "sci fi experiment gone wrong" into an existential crisis of the soul.

But it succeeds, astonishingly, at being both entertaining and bemusing.

I was glued to the screen from the beginning to the end. That seldom happens.

The actors, the script, the direction, all remind me of Hitchcock at his peak. YOU CARE WHAT HAPPENS TO THESE PEOPLE.

And the editing, OMG. This is the first film I can recall where aggressive editing was used instead of complex SFX. The editing is beyond brilliant, it moves the audience at a visceral level from scene to scene.

Recommended.

A few plot holes but it kept my attention throughout

It's a low-budget film, and actually, they make the budget go a long way. I liked the story, the acting was fine, and the production design and effects were spot on. I do agree with some reviewers that it could lose 10 minutes near the end. I hope we get to see more from this writer/director.

Whilst there are irrelevant side plots, and some parts are slow, it's pretty well acted, the tension and mystery are built well, the the ending is surprising.

Obviously the science makes no sense, but that's not what stories are for. A good effort.

Pop quiz hotshot, you wake up one morning and go see your friends. They are suddenly acting very evasive and hostile towards you. Do you a) ask them what is the matter and wait for an answer, or b) just ignore it and carry on as though nothing is wrong. What do you do. What do you do?

If your answer is a, welcome to the real world. If your answer is b, you will love this film. An interesting premise ruined by people deciding not to act as any normal person would do. Indeed, if they did act normally, this film would be around 30 minutes long and actually be a really good short film. Such as it is, we have to sit through an hour and a half of a mish mash of genres, to an ending that basically could've been tied up long before you get through your first handful of popcorn.

Anti Matter, or Worm, follows the story of 3 scientists who invent a wormhole, basically. I couldn't tell you any more because the first part of the film is so filled with scientific terminology that they could've been making anything, really. It then turns into scifi, a bit of horror, a random chase movie thriller, and a romantic drama. It's all well done all the whole, the acting is decent, directing is solid and the script is serviceable. So far, so 7 or 8 out of 10.

The problem is that the story, in order to fill a decent run time, becomes so convoluted that it begins to detract from the film's central ideas. The chase scene is so bizarre, it seems to have been taken from another film. The various red herrings are unnecessary and increasingly ridiculous, culminating in a comical playground chant that I genuinely couldn't work out was meant to be serious or not. There's even a gratuitous sex scene, which possibly ranks as the most shoe-horned excuse for nudity that I've ever seen.

It's so frustrating that a movie with an interesting idea and decent cast and crew would feel the need to keep adding more and more nonsense, and culminate in an ending which is nonsensical to the point of just kind of shrugging and going, "well, yeah, there you go". There's even a touch of ambiguity about it, which would've had me walking out if I wasn't comatose already.

How you like this film will depend entirely on my opening question. If you don't mind the fact that everything that happens could have been easily explained straight away, and not slowly dragged out, than give it a shot. I don't like it, but I respect it.