Peripheral

This is yet another movie that really isn't as good as the writer intended and nowhere near as good as it could have been. So many writers these days have really, really good concepts and ideas to get across, but they get so caught up in being unique or Avant-garde that they end up making their work completely incomprehensible.

This movie had a great idea to convey how the lines between human creators and technology are being so blurred these days and how the corporate control of creative endeavors is destroying the creativity that should be inherent to the process. The beginning and ending of the movie did a good job of forwarding those ideas in an effective yet unique way. The problem was the entire middle half of the movie which made little to no sense even with drugs factored in!

Ever since the 1960s, there has been a growing number of writers, especially young writers, who have gotten the idea that leaving the audience with more questions about the movie when it is over than they had when it started is somehow a good thing. This. Is. A. Lie. You can have an excellent movie that leaves you with many questions, but if you are walking out of the theater or turning off the TV and are still wondering what in the hell the movie was about, the writer has done a BAD JOB OF WRITING! I know there are people who will be very opposed to my opinion, but the thing is, it is not just my opinion, it is the opinion of almost every person on this planet who is not trying to be a pretentious jerk by saying that people who don't "get it" are just not intelligent, deep, or special to understand.

Writers need to learn to write WHOLE stories, stories that have a beginning, a middle, and an end so that when the audience has finished the story, they can actually tell what it was about. Can writing schools please start teaching that again? Because I am really tired of watching movies with really great ideas that completely fail to come together because the writer never got past the idea stage, but still somehow made it into a movie.

Other than the cast and some snippets of good music the whole film is junk. It didn't need to be feature length. The use of technology was way over the top, yet primitive in execution. Imagine using a see-through 50" TV with bright blue lights to write a novel in the dark....and use a touch screen keyboard with keys the size of chicken nuggets - which numpty approved that?

The story is about a young introverted author who had success with her first book. It caused some sort of "revolution". However for some reason she has no money to pay for electricity so agrees a deal with her publisher to write a second book if they pay her bills, the deal also comes with a few caveats...she must use their "hardware" to write the book, instead of her trusty typewriter. The hardware is boosted with AI to aid her writing and for thr publisher to keep tabs on her progress. There's also a side story with Rosie Day (interesting voice) who steals the scenes she's in, it's a shame that was part of the film was so small.

The VFX and CG was overused and over the top - there really was no need to go so sci-fi with the "hardware" and have a stupid webcam with red lights. It was like watching an episode of BBC Three's Snog, Marry, Avoid fused with Black Mirror, made by The Asylum.

No idea how this film was funded, although it didn't need much of a budget, they could have skipped the terrible VFX/UI work and given that cash to charity. The message they tried to drive home was hamfisted and pretentious drivle.

I feel bad for the cast as they did their parts well and will forever have this film on their resume... the story and execution of the film was just bad. Not an enjoyable film you'll ever tell anyone to watch, unless you hated them.

If this lead character had a single friend or family member to contact, this movie could be palpable.

Reality seems like a foreign language in this art piece. The message is interesting, but it could have been executed much much much better. As an episode of the Twilight Zone.

Young London based writer Bobbi Johnson (Hannah Arterton) is so skint that she can't pay her bills. She likes to write old school by using a typewriter but her publisher convinces her to use a state of the art computer that features artificial intelligence, and so her nightmare begins. Quite an interesting story, very strange at times but thankfully I was able to stick with it and make sense of the ending. Very much in the vein of David Cronenberg and his movie Videodrome, with a splash of David Lynch. In one scene she is raped (?) by the computer, reminded me of Evil Dead but with wires and leads instead of tree branches and vines. The small cast all do a good time, nice to see Jenny Seagrove. Not a movie that I'd watch again but it isn't bad.

Peripheral was a strange movie. Not just in its title which is equally odd but must have some meaning, but also by the events that happen in it. Hannah artenten plays bobbi. A writer that uses a typewriter for her stories. But one day because of her boss something weird turns up on her doorstep. A strange computer or ai that is very advenced and can help her write more and so bobbie can be productive. It bassically wants to brainwash her and weird things happen after that and it leads somehow to a pregnancy due to the computer and bobbie starts to turn into one herself almost. Overall this movie is weird but it is acted well and the story was interesting.