Nothing

The premise of this movie has been tickling my imagination for quite some time now. We've all heard or read about it in some kind of con-text. What would you do if you were all alone in the world? What would you do if the entire world suddenly disappeared in front of your eyes? In fact, the last part is actually what happens to Dave and Andrew, two room-mates living in a run-down house in the middle of a freeway system. Andrew is a nervous wreck to say the least and Dave is considered being one of the biggest losers of society. That alone is the main reason to why these two guys get so well along, because they simply only have each other to turn to when comforting is needed. Just until...

Straight from the beginning of the film lots and lots of problems happen to them. Both of them get involved with crime, Andrew suffers from paranoia and simply doesn't dare going out of the house. Dave is unsuccessful at his job and his colleagues don't treat him very well and with the respect he deserves. The amount of problems they face keeps increasing until that one day where they may have to face the inevitable and deal with it. This is just too much for them and they wish that everything would just go away... And of course that is exactly what happens.

The rest of the story places Dave and Andrew in this world of nothingness. At first they are surprised and have problems understanding and dealing with the features of this crazy environment, but later on they find out that they can do just about everything they want because it seems as if they are the only ones still left.

Nothing features an incredibly small cast - in fact, besides the first couple of shots from the film, we only see Dave (David Hewlett) and Andrew (Andrew Miller) in the entire film. It is clear that in order to pull this off, the cast has to be more than up for the task, because in a world where nothing exists there is nothing that can distract the viewer in any way. Vincenzo has decided to use a reasonable amount of close-up head shots to make it more interesting and it actually works quite well. Director of Photography, Derek Rogers, also has a nice way of teasing the audience by withholding visual information, especially at times where a character sees something and reacts to it, but we don't see it right away.

Obviously, this can't be an event driven film and it's not. Much of the action happens outside their house when they move around in the void. And that's where some of the most hilarious scenes take place, especially in the case of when Andrew discovers a candy bar.

Now, one could be thinking: "How does nothing look like?" Well, it looks like nothing indeed. The entire world of nothing is white... white no matter in what direction you look. This is the weakness of this film... After an hour or less it's getting extremely boring to look at and there has to be events to make sure it's more interesting to look at. Thank God, there are some. For example at times when the two lads, due to the properties of nothing, are able to jump really high as if nothing is made out of... tofu (as Andrew claims). It's fun to see how they are instantly able to use nothing to become gods of their own little society.

One of the best parts of the film is the set... Production designer Jasna Stefanovic has done a beautiful job in this film, the house in which these two guys live is so unnaturally fun to look at, still it seems right for these two to be living in a place like this. All in all, the production design is with no doubt one of the most powerful aspects of this film at it really makes the film worth watching...

However, the very best part of the film is the acting. Both David Hewlett and Andrew Miller really look like the professional actors they both are. The camera is on them for every second of the film and as previously said, there are just about no props in the film, they are really on a bare stage. With plenty of character development and some decent one-liners, clever dialogue (at times hilariously stupid), it all works to that end - and this really moves the movie away from the low-budget area to well-crafted handwork.

Let's talk a little about the visual effects, because they are definitely worth mentioning. Nothing features digital visual effects and prosthetics that equals any modern horror film. There's a rather horrifying dream sequence in the film, and although The Drews have milked that scene completely it's still fun to watch. One of the best visual effects in the film is at the end where Andrew and Dave suddenly discover their powers in this environment - they have the abilities to wish everything away, so what if they can do it the other way around and make things appear?

"Nothing" is a bright and well-lit movie, it really helps promoting the idea of them probably being dead (this is in fact one of their theories), but "Nothing" is a comedy and it slowly destroys its own theory. We don't know where they are or what has happened to them. We don't know if they will ever get out, because the movie ends before we see anything like that. The ending, by the way, is not as good as it could've been. It's rather easy to predict what is going to happen, still the writers have thought up a few incidents that help make it a little more interesting and in the end, it's a reasonably satisfactory one.

Take "Hollow Man", "Kill Bill", "Cube", "Epoch" and lots of other films and you have "Nothing". It really is an amalgam of different styles, still there is no other film (at least that I know of) Nothing is really like. For the people remembering the original Cube Production Commentary on its DVD may remember that Vincenzo Natali talked about how he came up with the story of Cube. He talks about him and André Bijelic having been room-mates at a time and they both were in this extremely dull room with no hope of getting out, "Nothing" could very well be the screened version of the origin of the Cube story, and to that end, it's almost like one of the Cube prequels.

What can I say? I enjoyed "Nothing", it is a great movie and the different parts of the movie are extremely well-made with tons of intelligent ideas, still I feel the movie is missing something and I have problems finding out precisely what it is... Maybe if we have a "Nothing 2" I can answer that question. "Nothing" is a great film, but not as good as I expected it to be.

Final rating: 7.5 / 10

... than this ;-) What would happen if Terry Gilliam and Douglas Adams would have worked together on one movie? This movie starts with a touch of Brazil... when, at a certain point, the story moves straight into the twilight zone... bringing up nothing new, but just nothing... and nothing is great fun! When Dave and Andrew starts to explore their new environment the movie gets really enjoyable... bouncing heads? well... yes ;-)

anyway... this movie was, imho, the biggest surprise at this year's FantasyFilmFest...

Just like in Cube and Cypher Natali gave this one a minimalistic, weird but very special design, which makes it hard to locate the place of the story or its time... timeless somehow...

When it comes to IMDb comments for this movie we have a Matrix 3 situation - either folks love it and praise it to heaven or they venomously loathe it.

If I want to be objective I will say that this is a..well.. interesting movie. One of those "what if" movies where the creator has a weird idea and than wraps a movie around it. In "Cube" it was "What if a bunch of different people would be put in a strange cube with all sorts of traps inside it." In "Nothing" it is much simpler - "What if two guys suddenly found themselves in nothing - in a completely literal meaning of the word."

The idea is interesting and unusual and very attractive in some ways. You must be at least interested in questions like "How does this 'nothing' work, really?" or "How will they get out of it, if at all?". In other words, with idea like that you can hardly go wrong, can you?

Well, as a matter of fact, you kind of can. The biggest issue with this movie is how you (the viewer) will react to the tone of the movie and (even more important) how you'll react to the characters. The director chose a comedic, over-the-top approach, with lots of close-ups, shouting, overacting and quite a bit of Tim Burtonness thrown into it. If you accept this tone, you'll have fun and probably love it. If the two guys screaming at each other start getting on your nerves the movie will become a chore, since there is (literally) nothing else to occupy your attention.

For me it was a bit of both. At times I was amused, at times bored, at times extremely irritated by the unorthodox way the characters reacted to the situation they found themselves in. All in all I've found it to be an interesting experience, but nothing to get too excited about. Little flick to pass the time. If you like movies that are a bit off, or like to see something different than rent this. If you keep your expectations reasonably low, you'll probably like it. In the end, I've found myself wandering what if the characters were more down-to-earth, more believable (as were those poor people stuck in a Cube)? I think THEN this could be a truly great movie.

Well in any case, it's waaay better than that godawful "Hypercube".

6/10

P.S. I simply have to put a note of this - the DVD edition shamelessly tries to promote this as a horror movie. The cover shows a screaming mouth, a terrified eye and a ghastly hand with see-through blood/veins in it. It was even situated at the horror shelf at my DVD rental store and conveniently didn't have a genre label on it. While I understand this is done to up the sales a bit it is in my opinion totally unacceptable and will probably result in bad reputation for this movie. Many will rent/buy it believing they will see a "Cube"-like horror/mystery movie and then be completely put off by the light tone and silliness of the whole thing. God, I hate false advertising. Shame on you, distributors.

NOTHING (3+ outta 5 stars) Another weird premise from the director of the movie "Cube". This time around there are two main characters who find themselves and their home transported to a mysterious white void. There is literally NOTHING outside of their small two-story house. Intriguing to be sure, but I thought the comedic tone established for this movie from the get-go was extremely ill-conceived. There needs to be some humour, certainly... and I have no problem with the humour that was eventually derived from the plight of our two heroes (their final "showdown" was definitely a hoot)... but I really think the movie would have been a lot better off if it had stayed more rooted in reality in the beginning. After watching the movie I watched the "Making of" feature on the DVD and a short trailer at the end is almost totally devoid of the "sillier" comedic aspects... making it look like a completely different (and slightly better) movie. The last half hour of the movie is where things really start to come together... similar in a way to the recent movie "Primer." The actors are fine when they are not overdoing the comedy shtick. They are really quite believable in their more "normal" moments. I was probably ready to write this movie off as a failed experiment at the midway point... but it won me over by the end. (And keep watching past the credits for the final scene... just don't ask me to explain it.)

Nothing as an idea had huge potential, but the movie just didn't quite pull it off. First of all, there is no reason ever given to why these guys suddenly have this power to wish away everything they hate. Immediately they wish away everything but their house (because they're reclusive agoraphobic nerds) which sort of writes the Writer into a corner. It doesn't take long for the characters to explore nothing and then learn to live in it & enjoy it. Instead the characters could have spent a lot more time in the normal world exercising this new power slowly throughout the movie until maybe toward the end there is Nothing. This would have had a more satisfying storyline as the viewer could sort of feel like they're vicariously vanishing life's problems along with the character, only to learn the moral is that if you don't learn to live with your problems, you'll eventually wish away EVERYTHING....just an idea.