Peripheral

I was quite intrigued by this bizarre and rather abstract piece of cinema. I enjoyed how it was written. I would have preferred more of a cyberpunk city setting to really sell it but I had fun watching it in a rather 'cant look away' curiosity. Reminded me a bit of 'Hardware' meets David Cronenberg meets David Lynch. Would I rewatch it? Probably not. But for a free one time watch as a cyberpunk fan it tickles a curiosity and has its merits, albeit nonsensical, absurdist, abstract or hallucinatory at times on purpose. Definitely better than your average cheaply written schlock. Would at least recommend!

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.

I don't think I would call this horror, although there is some horrible stuff here, it is more along the lines of a dark sci-fi, quasi dystopian thriller. It is a seriously flawed modern sideways take on "Videodrome", and reminds me a bit of the absurdly stupid "Await Further Instructions", it is better than that hackneyed piece of junk, though there are several similarities with that film. It certainly shares a lot of the flaws of "Videodrome", and unfortunately it has even more flaws. While the acting is very good in "Peripheral", the story is threadbare, and that is fine except we learn very little about this book that sparked youth riots, and I really feel that was an important thing to explore more. Take out the 5 minutes of useless sex scenes and go a bit into the history of that book, the most we get is that it was drug fueled and that she wrote it on an old typewriter, this just isn't enough to explain the fanatical response of one of her fans(whose response the Bobbi's book is pretty over the top). I really feel we needed to know what in her book made her feel this way? Even in "Videodrome", it's clear inspiration, we see what is causing the protagonist and his girlfriend to spiral into madness and more.

This is not a spoiler. Bobbi seems to be the by-product of a bad book deal, I think this is inferred in the subtext, she was a junky as well, so she very well may have squandered her money on drugs, I don't how see some people didn't get this from the film? Again, there were things here that do not merit more explanation. How many people have been the victims of bad contracts or wasted their earnings on partying and drugs? A LOT. This is absolutely inferred without a shadow of doubt throughout the dialog in the film, it just isn't explicitly said.

"Peripheral" has a very dark vision of the media and how it manipulates both the creators and the consumers. There is a lot of unexplained stuff here, though I don't actually think explaining a lot of those things would have benefit the film other than what was prior mentioned. What also would have benefit the film was cutting down the overly long sex scenes, seriously, there are two and they drag on into infinitum. There was genuinely no need for this, they went on for several minutes both and I found myself skipping them because they really had no need to be this long(I always skip sex scenes anyway if they are more than a few seconds and explicit at all). One of these is what is essentially a quasi technological date rape scene. I get the metaphor here, and that is fine, but it just dragged on and on, I kept skipping 10 seconds to see when it would end, and it seemed endless.

In the end, I thought it was an interesting movie though highly flawed movie. It is a bit obtuse, it doesn't explain much explicitly, by the end you really don't understand most of what is real and what wasn't, there are a ton of metaphors here, maybe too many. Though I suppose that was the point, and given the metaphors and surrealistic aspects, it would have been beneficial if the surreal aspects were pushed more to the forefront, and again, if we had more of an explanation of why her initial book was so influential. It is pretty explicitly stated why they want her to write more books by the end, and this again is an obvious commentary on how media manipulates and hurts people, and it shows this in quite explicit, yet metaphorical terms. This movie is actually better thought out than people are giving it credit for, but if you don't like strange movies and thinking a little and piecing things together, you will hate it.

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.

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.