The Brain Hack

A man sits in front of his laptop clearly agitated . He looks out the window and sees a spectral figure standing on the street corner looking up towards him . He goes back to his computer clearly terrified . He gasps " He's found me" . He swears and panics and as the picture breaks up something enters his room

If nothing else THE BRAIN HACK contains a great opening hook . Billed as "A metaphysical thriller for the digital generation" the opening scene hints it's going to be great horror short but doesn't quite deliver . It reminded me in some ways of Aronofsky's PI as Fallon and Harper discuss the possibilities of God existing . Of course there's very logical reasons for believing in God . In the foreword of his book The Blind Watchmaker Richard Dawkins easily explains it away by stating that whenever mankind became self aware he made things so it's logical that he jumped to the conclusion that someone also made the seas , sky and sun . Take also the ancient Indo-Aryans who through the seasons changing and the female menstrual cycle believed everything including human life itself was cyclical hence Hinduism the oldest established religion on Earth which has reincarnation as its fundamental belief . Unfortunately the discussion between Fallon and Harper becomes a bit confusing and then turns in to a lot of running about while at the same time giving more than a little nod to Cronenberg's VIDEODROME . Then more running about and confused flashbacks in a short film that obviously thinks it is clever but is nothing of the sort and seems to be a showcase of how to give the audience a headache . Nice opening but nothing much else after that

The major problem with The Brain Hack is the duration of the movie. Twenty minutes is just not enough to bring a story like this one. The idea though is good. I can see a longer movie being interesting with this story, but now it just fell undevelopped and unfinished. The acting and cinematography are okay as well is the story. It could be a good sci-fi thriller movie with the right funds and actors. The idea is there, it just needs the right people and more money to finish this story. Did I see God in the end? No I didn't, like nobody else ever did unless they are liars or schizophrenics.

A film student and a computer science student join together in a project for the search for a way to jump open the human brain to connect with patterns and shapes in order to connect to what may or may not be God – a project which understandably brings the attention of religious authorities.

There are some good ideas in this film and as it sets out to do, it does produce some good tension on the way to a clever conclusion, and it generally works. The concept is delivered with a rather obvious exposition style, but it all sounds smart so it makes it work quite well, whether it is true or not. From here we develop along that idea while also bringing in some danger hinted at in the opening and while it does mostly work, the limitations of the film are also hard to avoid. Firstly, it has no business being 20 minutes long – particularly not in light of the ending, whose logic would very much indicate that it should not be 20 minutes long! The long time also means we have lots of scenes of the two characters talking in front of computer screens, which makes it feel very low budget and restricted. When the danger comes it is also of the low budget variety, with a static dark figure wearing a mask – and the film relies too much on that plus some jump scares rather than building a genuine sense of risk and tension in the characters themselves. Okay, from a narrative point of view this makes sense, but I don't think that was a deliberate decision not to do.

The limits of the film also extend to the two actors, neither of whom really are particularly good or convincing. The low budget nature of the film also shows in the production values, and the film does have a limited look to many of the location it uses; I am not sure if it is a student film, but it does feel like one made at university. Despite the limits though, it does have a good flow to it and I quite liked the clever ending, but it badly needed to be shorter, smarter, and sharper.

Considering there are so many awful films produced these days I want to offer the makers of this every encouragement I can. They obviously have talent and I hope they make more films. The ideas here are very interesting & I would really like to see them expanded into a feature. Good work all involved. We don't have enough thought provoking cinema. Keep at it.

Help! Is there an editor in the house? At times this is all over the place. It is talky and slow at times as the concepts are discussed. I alway find too much discussion means that the visuals weren't planned well. We get a lot of computer graphics and flashing images.