Control

No pun intended - the movie that some may call a Cube knockoff (I wonder if there was something that inspired Cube back then?) ... and they are not completely wrong if you are honest with yourself. We wake up with the main character and we are as confused as she is. The initial surprise and really tight tension wear off though ... as time goes by.

While the movie seems to be able to add new nuggets (of information and otherwise), is it enough to keep you engaged towards the end? I would think that many will slowly lose interest ... it remains decent! And the ending may very well sway you to vote better than I did ... but is it really? The action is nice but sort of repeats itself towards the end - well no pun intended, right? Life is not a circle ... and we need to have an ending to things ... even if it means we have not moved forward ... at all!

The problem is that it doesn't do anything just fine. Everything in it's hit or miss and it clearly isn't batting 1.000.

The lead, good. Mystery, also good. The story, clever. The action, really good and the whole thing looks surprisingly good too.

The problem is Roger doesn't get enough to do, the story unfolds slower than it should especially given the style, there's too many flashbacks and the ending's underwhelming given the wait.

That said I think it's worth seeing cause even if it's not entirely original, it feels different and it does a lot well. The effort that went into it is clear and it shows.

A young woman awakens in a stylish prison with no memory except for when she sleeps. Eileen played by Sarah Mitich, sees herself and her daughter in her dreams at a beach singing the same lullaby over and over again. An analog-sounding Alexa-type computer that appears to lack AI has monotone one-way answers to the questions which Sarah Mitich asks.

The computer forces her to complete tasks that become impossible to do without using Sara Mitich's psychokinetic powers, which Sarah learns to control over agony, distress, and fear whilst attempting to achieve the expected result of the test. She's threatened by the dormant Computer with the life of her child.

The cinematography is very good, and Sarah Mitich's acting is very believable. Her husband played by George Tchortov is a bit wooden but he is playing a comatose character.

A creative low budget film misses its marks. If you were to fast-forward Sarah Mitich's dream scenes you wouldn't miss anything. For example, the lullaby repeated often does not tie to anything.

I think that the film is still worth watching. The concept is Interesting.

'Control' (not related to the game series of the same name) features Eileen (Sara Mitich), a twenty-something year old woman trapped in a small room and given odd tasks to complete in a short time limit. Each task becomes increasingly more difficult, and failure to complete a task results in her daughter Eve (Evie Loiselle) dying. Through unchained memories of her daughter and husband Roger (George Tchortov), Eileen must find a way out and save her family.

The premise of being unaware of why one is in a room to be tested/tortured is not a new trope, but the twist of psychokinetic powers does add a bit of originality to the film. Cinematography is very well done and plot makes a logical conclusion, but the fault lies in the characters themselves; through the beginning, they are not very convincing, though to her credit, Sara Mitich does pull off a solid performance by the conclusion. Several plot holes and a completely unexpalined antagonist muddle the narrative, but it is an rather interesting piece, given the budget.

Worth a once over.

The dialogue is so transparently contrived you cannot take seriously that a human being, let alone a pair of them, could possibly be so deliberately unhelpful, obfuscating and unreasonable.

Reminiscent of The Cube but infinitely less self-aware, bluntly, the writing is too stupid to allow even the most credulous of audiences to enjoy the premise.

The performances are emotionally convincing, and camera work is laudable given the budget, nothing can save the film from writing so disingenously unlike a real person. You spend the entire time frustrated that the characters won't utter a single coherent sentence. Beyond that, the exposition is blunt and choppy, the characters' decisions make no sense, the emotionality feels like the writer has never actually met a human being.

No decision in the entire film, either by the characters, writer or driector make any sense. It's incoherent from opening to close.

Just a disasterous waste of decent acting and a potentially interesting idea.