Cycle

Imagine a few people doing a sort of radio play and then putting on some generic low quality 3D animation where some characters need to have a mask because there is no budget for different and moving human faces. Nothing is explained or makes any sense, everything is chaotic and dreamlike. Maybe there is some smart idea coming out of this mess later in the film, but I couldn't watch more than 15 minutes before I decided I can't continue.

I've never seen such a horrible movie in all my quite-respectably-long life. There wasn't a single word of dialog worth hearing, not a single camera angle worth viewing, not a single beam of proper lighting, in this whole nightmare - not a nightmare in the usual frightening sense, but in the imprisoned-with-an-under-achieving-insurance-agent for all eternity sense. I can't say it any better than that, nor do I have any further words to add, IMDB. I've lost respect for your site because you've allowed a rating of 4+ to stand. The sole viewer who gave this piece of offal a 10 I leave to your own tormentuous and apparently completely-tasteless life. Enjoy!

This movie has a few problems.

1. The graphics. It's made fully digitally, and very cheaply too. It can be seen in design, unnatural or mostly repetetive movements (forest run isna good example), face mimic animation, use of masks to avoid animating them, use of assets that look like freebies downloaded from the internet. I can see a massive amount of work put in here, but it hadn't gone well.

2. Camera work. Constant usenof a shaky "disturbing" camera. Why the actual f..k would someone decide to do that? It's horrible and as far as I get that it was meant to be uneasy, worrying, etc. It's only making you want to vomit.

3. Plot. It's basically non existent. Only thenfog, and the sense of entrapment is like taken from UBIK by P. K. Dick, but that is all. Rest is like a scrapbook made by a person with too much glue to sniff, trying to tell to many stories at once, hiping that together they make sense.

4. Clichés. Yes, you can find here few references to well known SF movies, but that scraps cannot make this a good movie.

5. No hope. Not in the story though. From the first few minutes you know that you are wasting your time, and if you stick thru the movie to watch, you will understand how right you was.

One good thing - warp sequence is simply nice to look at.

I can't help but wonder about the dark, political references the director might be making to the situation in his homeland in this disturbing tale, which is a cross between Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece and the epic doom and gloom of Hungarian director Bela Tarr. Although the effects aren't as high tech as other high budget sci-fi flicks, they are definitely visually rich, surreal at times, and very effective in telling the story. The only question is what is the real story? The film's title clearly alludes to the seemingly endless circular narrative that offers no escape for the protagonist Jack, as a dark 'fog' – a metaphor for all those uncontrollable forces in our lives – comes creeping closer and closer by the minute. Thankfully, Jack has the courage to venture off the beaten path into some potentially dangerous territory (beautiful and bizarre computer generated spaces) rather than give in, in hopes that he might be able to break the cycle. Despite the somewhat unconventional narrative structure, which actually helps move the story along, Cycle is mesmerising both visually and aurally and has enough stamina to draw you into Jack's world as he tries desperately to escape his nightmarish situation with very little help from the base station or those strange masked men who keep on popping up throughout the course of the film. Suitable for those who like their sci-fi dark and gritty.

Overall this is 4.3, strange when there are only 3 other reviews giving it a 10.

A strange mind bending homage to so many films and games, the multiverse version to Primer's time travel. Also seems a bit Lovecraftian.

Totally bonkers and I quite liked it. The CGI wasn't as convincing for me, looked like like a generic decade old sci if video game.