User reviews

When it comes to IMDb comments for this movie we have a Matrix 3 situation - either folks love it and praise it to heaven or they venomously loathe it.

If I want to be objective I will say that this is a..well.. interesting movie. One of those "what if" movies where the creator has a weird idea and than wraps a movie around it. In "Cube" it was "What if a bunch of different people would be put in a strange cube with all sorts of traps inside it." In "Nothing" it is much simpler - "What if two guys suddenly found themselves in nothing - in a completely literal meaning of the word."

The idea is interesting and unusual and very attractive in some ways. You must be at least interested in questions like "How does this 'nothing' work, really?" or "How will they get out of it, if at all?". In other words, with idea like that you can hardly go wrong, can you?

Well, as a matter of fact, you kind of can. The biggest issue with this movie is how you (the viewer) will react to the tone of the movie and (even more important) how you'll react to the characters. The director chose a comedic, over-the-top approach, with lots of close-ups, shouting, overacting and quite a bit of Tim Burtonness thrown into it. If you accept this tone, you'll have fun and probably love it. If the two guys screaming at each other start getting on your nerves the movie will become a chore, since there is (literally) nothing else to occupy your attention.

For me it was a bit of both. At times I was amused, at times bored, at times extremely irritated by the unorthodox way the characters reacted to the situation they found themselves in. All in all I've found it to be an interesting experience, but nothing to get too excited about. Little flick to pass the time. If you like movies that are a bit off, or like to see something different than rent this. If you keep your expectations reasonably low, you'll probably like it. In the end, I've found myself wandering what if the characters were more down-to-earth, more believable (as were those poor people stuck in a Cube)? I think THEN this could be a truly great movie.

Well in any case, it's waaay better than that godawful "Hypercube".

6/10

P.S. I simply have to put a note of this - the DVD edition shamelessly tries to promote this as a horror movie. The cover shows a screaming mouth, a terrified eye and a ghastly hand with see-through blood/veins in it. It was even situated at the horror shelf at my DVD rental store and conveniently didn't have a genre label on it. While I understand this is done to up the sales a bit it is in my opinion totally unacceptable and will probably result in bad reputation for this movie. Many will rent/buy it believing they will see a "Cube"-like horror/mystery movie and then be completely put off by the light tone and silliness of the whole thing. God, I hate false advertising. Shame on you, distributors.

NOTHING (3+ outta 5 stars) Another weird premise from the director of the movie "Cube". This time around there are two main characters who find themselves and their home transported to a mysterious white void. There is literally NOTHING outside of their small two-story house. Intriguing to be sure, but I thought the comedic tone established for this movie from the get-go was extremely ill-conceived. There needs to be some humour, certainly... and I have no problem with the humour that was eventually derived from the plight of our two heroes (their final "showdown" was definitely a hoot)... but I really think the movie would have been a lot better off if it had stayed more rooted in reality in the beginning. After watching the movie I watched the "Making of" feature on the DVD and a short trailer at the end is almost totally devoid of the "sillier" comedic aspects... making it look like a completely different (and slightly better) movie. The last half hour of the movie is where things really start to come together... similar in a way to the recent movie "Primer." The actors are fine when they are not overdoing the comedy shtick. They are really quite believable in their more "normal" moments. I was probably ready to write this movie off as a failed experiment at the midway point... but it won me over by the end. (And keep watching past the credits for the final scene... just don't ask me to explain it.)

This surely has a lot of stuff to be called Nothing.

It was quite creative and original, and most of all - well acted.

A couple of good lines here and there, some almost emotional moments, but this movie never takes itself seriously and neither should you.

I was ok with its visual and overall style, but a more focused direction would've made this so much better. It was also a little confusing to see both actors from the Cube (plus the Director) and even hearing some of the Cube's sound effects re-cycled here.

I still wasn't sure what they were going for, probably a bit of everything. This is definitely not a film for everyone, not because it's too smart, but because it's original.

Sitting, Typing… Nothing is the latest "what if?" fest offered by Vincenzio Natali, and starring David Hewlitt and Andrew Miller as two losers. One is having relationship problems, got canned from his job (because of relationship problems) and the police are out to get him (because of his job and his relationship problems). The other guy is a agoraphobic who refuses to go outside his home, is met by a bothersome girl guide who calls on her Mom to claim she was molested when he doesn't buy cookies from him. Oh yeah, the police are after him too, after the Mom of the girl scout call them in to arrest him.

Man, what a day.

What if you could make all of this disappear? That is the whole premise behind 'Nothing'. The two fools realize, the cops, the girl scout, the cars, the lawn, the road, everything… disappear. There's nothing but white space! This is an interesting concept I thought. I also looked at the time of this, 30 minutes had gone in the movie, and I still had an hour left in the movie. Could the 2 actors make this work and keep us entertained for 60 minutes? Although the actors try, 60 minutes IS a long time and there is clearly dead air in places of this movie. But the two actors, whom are life-long friends with each other and the director, have such great repertoire with each other, that it was fun to watch for the dialogue and improve goofing around the two do. There are lots of supernatural elements, but it's more of their response to these elements that ultimately make this film worth seeing.

Director Vincenzo Natali first showed his penchant for character-based sci-fi flicks with his 1997 short film "Elevated", wherein 3 people remain trapped in an elevator while unseen monsters roam the building. His follow-up feature project "Cube", released later that year, had a very similar premise, this time with 6 people and instead of an elevator it was a vast expansion of interlocking cubic deathtraps. Both were admirable attempts to take the sci-fi genre a step further, by deliberately declining to show almost any visual stimulation, choosing instead to spend as much time as possible focusing on the human element, how the characters act, react and interact under incomprehensible and dangerous conditions. After his exploration into the mainstream with 2002's "Cypher", Natali has come back to his bizarre character-film trend to bring us "Nothing", his latest, and by far most optimistic and comedic take on the wide cinematic world of "What If?"

Dave (David Hewlett) and Andrew (Andrew Miller) are life-long friends, brought together by a mutual detachment from society and a lack of any one else to be with. Dave, who has always been hindered by a selfish and somewhat dimwitted nature, lives rent-free with Andrew at his ill-located and ill-constructed house, where he often takes advantage of Andrew's neurotic and antisocial mentality. Despite all this, the two misfits are happy together, until one day their deep character flaws, coupled with some astronomically bad luck, land them in the middle of some pretty serious, jail-sentence-worthy trouble. On top of this, they discover that their house has been deemed unfit for existence and is scheduled to be demolished before sunset, so in the hazy, nightmarish panic of everything going wrong for them, they wish that the whole world would just disappear. And it does.

Going any further with the synopsis would compromise a lot of the film's slow (occasionally too slow) reveal about what's happened to Dave and Andrew, and how they deal with their new reality. Natali's fascination with studying human behavior under duress (ala The Birds) is here in spades, but simply by making the main characters friends rather than strangers, he's able to break away from the thriller-horror element of this premise to open it up to a more comfortable and optimistic level. It's almost as if he's made the aphoristic opposite of "Cube".

Of course, the film is not 85 minutes of laughter and sunshine. In keeping with fundamental realism, our two anti-heroes' dynamic often becomes antagonistic, sometimes with rather nasty results. Like the "Desert Island" game, the film looks at how even best friends, when left alone together, can fall apart, but at the same time it shows that friends are vital to the quality of existence. In a very twisted, sci-fi way, this is a feel-good flick, with good heart and good intentions.

However, there are a few qualms to be had with "Nothing". While the two lead actors, Hewlett and Miller, do well with their parts, their characters are not nearly as interesting as they should have been, considering it is completely up to them to entertain us for the better part of an hour. There is some development in the relationship and personalities of Dave and Andrew, some background is given, but ultimately not enough. A generous viewer will sit through the less-engaging portions of the film to see it through to the end, but cynics will probably give up pretty fast.

Acting, as mentioned, is adequate, and considering the amount of 'green-screen' work that would've been needed, reasonably convincing. David Hewlett and Andrew Miller, who both wrote co-wrote the screenplay, have been long-time friends of Vincenzo Natali: Hewlett has in fact featured in every film Natali has made. Perhaps it was their creative input that steered this film in a more positive direction. Nonetheless, the story could have been a lot more involving. Granted, it is relatively entertaining considering that (no pun intended) nothing really happens, but you get the impression that, in more experienced hands, a lot more could've been done with this premise.

In all fairness, "Nothing" is an impressive piece of work in many ways. The concept is interesting, the direction is inventive, the script works on a human level and, most of all, it shows a progression in Natali's creative mentality. For fans of his work, this will be a delight, and for others it will be a nice way to pass a little unwanted time. It's just a shame that the director's fixation on human drama prevented it from being the great, fun film it could have been.

Whether it's a good movie or not, films of this kind has to be made, i think. It remembers me of "I love Huckabees", a overwhelmingly puzzling movie with Isabelle Huppert being sodomized by a young American in a mud pond, in a merry sadistic-masochist way (??!!!!). I hope the director will go on stepping across the border, as though i felt the choices Vincenzo Natali made, were not always subtle (some of the scenes were unhappily kind of "tarte-à-la-crème", like a childish slapstick), speaking about script and cinematography… The color of "Cube" was black, "Nothing" is white, more cheerful, surprisingly, than the former films of Natali.

Nothing as an idea had huge potential, but the movie just didn't quite pull it off. First of all, there is no reason ever given to why these guys suddenly have this power to wish away everything they hate. Immediately they wish away everything but their house (because they're reclusive agoraphobic nerds) which sort of writes the Writer into a corner. It doesn't take long for the characters to explore nothing and then learn to live in it & enjoy it. Instead the characters could have spent a lot more time in the normal world exercising this new power slowly throughout the movie until maybe toward the end there is Nothing. This would have had a more satisfying storyline as the viewer could sort of feel like they're vicariously vanishing life's problems along with the character, only to learn the moral is that if you don't learn to live with your problems, you'll eventually wish away EVERYTHING....just an idea.

Charlie Kauffman has made weird metaphysical angst popular, but this canadian gem makes it hilarious.

Like most weird films the less said about plot the better but let's set the scene, two friends Anthony and Dave have been together since childhood, they can't cope with the world and eventually this means they no longer have to. But that is where even more problems begin.

I loved this film, it made me smile long after the final credits and that is a rare experience with so many mass produced pieces of "nothing" out there.

Don't miss this.

As far as Canadian movies go, this is pretty good. It's a decent low budget movie, decent acting, quite humorous, good set design and the effects were good as well. Now after saying that, this movie, with it's lofty goals, doesn't hold me in thrall like other low budget noodle scratchers (ie:'Donnie Darko' or 'Cube' as a few examples).

I remember seeing a making off type story on Movie television years ago, and was looking forward to seeing this. I had no idea I'd wait three years! As to the particulars of the movie. I loved the look of the house and the surreal nature of it at the start--a solitary left side of a side by side home in the middle of the freeway! Then the trouble the characters both go through by the 15 (?) minute mark, was both humorous and timely--no long Peter Jackson lets drag out the movie to hit three hours with useless details. The acting by the two leads was as good as needed.

I liked the look of the Nothing world, very minimal.

I did not quite understand the movie however. I liked watching the movie and waiting for the answer, too bad the filmmakers never divulged it.

By the way, stay till after the credits.

I haven't written a review on IMDb for the longest time, however, I felt myself compelled to write this! When looking up this movie I found one particular review which urged people NOT to see this film. Do not pay any attention to this ignorant person! NOTHING is a fantastic film, full of laughs and above all... imagination! Aren't you sick and tired of being force fed the same old cycle of bubble-gum trash movies? Sometimes a film like NOTHING comes along and gives you something you have never seen before. I don't even care if you dislike (even hate) the movie, but no one has a right to discredit the film. IMDb has a monumental impact on reputations and no negative review should discredit the film like that. Just say you hate it and why you hate it... but don't try to tell people that they shouldn't watch it. We have minds of our own and will make up our own minds thank you.

If my judgment is any good, I'd say that more people will enjoy this movie as opposed to those who hate it.

Treat your mind to a bit of eye-candy! See NOTHING!

Tweaked a little bit, 'Nothing' could be a children's film. It's a very clever concept, touches upon some interesting metaphysical themes, and goes against pretty much every Hollywood convention you can think of...what goes against everything more than, literally, "nothing"? Nothing is the story of two friends who wish the world away when everything goes wrong with their lives. All that's left is what they don't hate, and a big empty white space. It's hard to focus a story on just two actors for the majority of your film, especially without any cuts to anything going on outside the plot. It focuses on pretty much one subject, but that's prime Vincenzo Natali territory. If you've seen 'Cube', you know already that he tends to like that type of situation. The "nothing" in this movie is apparently infinite space, but Natali somehow manages to make it somewhat claustrophobic, if only because there's literally nothing else, and nowhere else to go. The actors sell it, although you can tell these guys are friends anyway. Two actors from 'Cube' return here (Worth and Kazan), but are entirely different characters. They change throughout the story, and while they're not the strongest actors in the world, they're at least believable.

The reason I say this could be a children's film under the right tweaks, is because aside from a few f-bombs and a somewhat unnecessary bloody dream sequence, the whimsical and often silly feel of this movie could very much be digested easily by kids. So I find it an odd choice that the writers decided to add some crass language and a small amount of gore, especially considering there isn't very much of it. This could've gotten a PG rating easily had they simply cut a few things out and changed a little dialogue. There is very little objectionable about this film, but just enough to keep parents from wanting their kids to see it. I only say that's a shame because not because I support censorship, but because that may have been the only thing preventing this movie from having wider exposure.

At any rate, this is a reasonably entertaining film, albeit with a few dragged-out scenes. But for literally being about nothing, and focused entirely on two characters and their interactions with absolutely nothing, they do a surprisingly good job for an independent film.

the only word that sums up this movie is quirky. it's a light-hearted romp through an existential concept. bouncy (in more way than one) and a bit nutty. i wouldn't exactly call it grand and unforgettable cinema and it doesn't seem quite as memorable as the director's first movie "cube" but it's a good pit of fluff to watch on a Sunday morning. the acting veers from respectable to annoying at times but i believe that's how it was to be written. done as a serious movie it could perhaps have been great or may very well have stepped into a state of pretension. a little like "the matrix" meets "head" meets "human nature".

6.8 out of ten

Dave (David Hewlett) and Andrew (Andrew Miller) are the bestest buds. They were picked on at school and hence decided to join up to somehow survive being losers. Dave just basically has no concept and get trodden on his whole life. Meanwhile Andrew is afraid of the outside world and has locked himself at home. Dave and Andrew live together making a perfect match, where Dave deals with the outside world with Andrew providing for the inside...

Everything goes awry in this perfect life when Dave decides to move out with his girlfriend. This initiates a short sequence of events that ends up with Dave and Andrew cornered at home with two squadrons of police, a demolition crew and a lying little scout outside. With nowhere to run and hide the duo wish away the outside world - only for them to get their wish... All that is left of the world is their house and a big nothingness of tofu.

The movie is mildly funny with some exquisite lines in there (with 'We're not dead! We have cable!' to cherry on top). Problem with the movie is that its a one gimmick movie. And the gimmick doesn't really fill in the ninety odd minutes of the film, which would do just fine as a semi-long short film. The jokes really run out quite fast and the serious parts aren't deep enough to make the film intriguing in the obvious direction. Albeit the actors have a nice chemistry going you get bored with the plot quite quickly. The script tries to lengthen the duration, but does so with a big hit to its end quality.

All in all - brilliant at times, but ultimately disappointing.

I wasn't sure what to expect but am I glad I went to see this. A smart, slightly twisted comedy that makes you think. I wasn't quite sure how a director can create "nothing", but leave it to Mr. Natali and the brilliant individuals at C.O.R.E. to create another low budget set that looks real (as real as nothing can be). Well worth your time and money, if you have the opportunity to see this, please go. You'll be glad you did.

This movie is just really boring. I've never seen Cube and don't know what it is about, but I really hope it's better than this. I'm not finished with the movie yet, but I'm really really bored. And I don't get bored easily. Please make it stop soon. Okay, some concrete reasons. Well, the first ten minutes were actually pretty cool. I was thinking to myself how neat of a movie it was, but when everything actually disappeared, it turned into two guys walking around in white space. You would think that there would at least be some interesting conversations to make up for it, but no, not really. And the character of Andrew is too nervous and breaks into sweats so frequently, I felt queasy just looking at him. I'm sorry, but Nothing is Boring. So far at least. ButI'm not sure I can watch it any longer. I felt like my life was "on pause" throughout the movie. Sorry.

A wonderfully unique gem about two best friends David and Andrew one of which is agoraphobic and the other deals with losing his job and girlfriend within a day. A little into it both make the world the disappear except them and the house which is a unique concept and not known by many; I appreciate underground type of movies. Nothing is well written, funny, and odd in the most perfect way! Vincenzo Natali is an awesome Director that I've enjoyed since I was little, he does a lot of bizarre projects that I love!

I see this film as an interesting spin on the 'best friends for life' direction. Hewlett and Miller have good on-screen interaction and their characters really bounce well off each other. I agree the plot could be seen as very flat, it does seem like it takes a while to move from one point to another but strangely it suits this amble through the laid back plot. Don't expect to understand what's happening, it's not a film about understanding vast complexities, such as the aforementioned Cube or Primer, but stands as a general story of confusion and friendship. Logical details are overlooked most of the time, which can be frustrating when you want to understand aspects of the plot more, but these things don't really need explanation in the grand scheme of the film. It would, however, have been better to see more focused points of conflict to give the viewer a greater idea of where the plot is headed, the ambiguity of the direction it takes did tire after a short time.

As a fan of other films Hewlett has been in, I appreciate his style of acting in Nothing, this seemed to be a perfectly feasible character for him to be, though I do still believe the nihilist Hewlett is most entertaining. I can't recall having seen Miller in anything else, however I will be looking out for his name in features to come.

Worth a watch, nothing mega special but a fun experience.

Nothing is an independent film, a comedy of the absurd, by Canadian director Vincenzo Natali - One of those movies that you like or you hate, you get or you miss. You just have to check the extremes in ratings by the Rotten Tomatoes' Community.

Nothing tells the story of two buddies -Dave and Andrew-, who have been best pals since school days, a couple of losers whose lives are a mess and going from bad to worse, until something happens and find themselves in a world of white nothingness.

The movie contains Natali's recurrent themes, already explored in some of his previous movies: claustrophobic spaces and situations, characters placed in estrange situations that are difficult to explain from a rational point of view, personal and psychological change amidst adversity, among others. Moreover, the two main actors also appear in some of his other movies.

The script, by actor Andrew Miller, is original, with great dialogs and situations, and explores a buddy relationship both realistically and fictionally. The setting is also incredibly interesting and perfect to start an experiment about human interaction. Despite the low budget, the movie works well both when is set in the real world and when is set in the Nothing area. I especially liked the creation of the house where the two friends live, which is more a burrow than a house, and matches perfectly the personality and type of person that Dave and Andrew are. The few especial digital effects are very effective and cute.

David Hewlett and Andrew Miller are great in their respective roles, especially Miller, who has to change his acting registry dramatically during the movie; but, both actors are believable in their roles and are great lab-rats for this cinematic experiment.

One of the main flaws of the movie is the connection-disconnection between the first part of the movie and the Nothing part, which is connected in a very simplistic unconvincing way. On the other hand, I thought that if the couple could vanish the world around them, they could also vanish the nothing around them and go into a new deeper territory, a real experiment., or even change those things that they hate in the real world. The end is inconclusive, although matches the crazy story and its childish characters.

I found the movie hilarious, engaging, refreshing and very original. Moreover, the movie is unpretentious and takes itself lightly. Just the few credits at the beginning tell you this.

Natali is one of those rare people in the world of cinema who seem to come always with great stories and ideas that are, then, slashed by mainstream critics and mainstream watchers, who praise, instead, movies that are half as interesting and entertaining.

Having seen CUBE, I've been a fan of Vincenzo Natali's work. Natali seems to have this inept ability to take a storyline, and hardly wring it our like a wet towel for all the storyline he can muster. Instead, he lets the stories themselves unfold in natural ways, so much in fact, that you may in fact believe there is this Cube were people try to escape, or in the case of NOTHING, a large empty expanse where there is... nothing! The advert had me hooked instantly. It seemed so simple! Take two characters who no one likes, and send them to a world where there is nothing. Natali does this so simply that you forget the logic that a place where there is nothing cannot exist. In fact, the world of nothing becomes something of an irony within the film. There's nothing there, but also 'something' there.

It might be a good time to point out that the trailer is highly misleading. I was fortunate enough to actually understand that the film leaned to a more comedic side than the trailer otherwise told so. Therefore upon watching the film, i laughed every now and again, whereas someone who the advert mislead may find themselves utterly confused.

If i may take a minute to give the film some praise, where the film excels on is the concept. It is a genius concept to have a world of nothing, and to put two characters there, NOT two brilliant minded characters, who will philosophise and work out their surroundings, but two idiots who have absolutely no clue as to where the hell they are! Another strong point is the film's cinematography, though at first this may not seem it! Where each wall, north, earth, south, west, up and down is just a white plane, a perception of depth becomes faulty. It is hard to determine where things are placed in the Mis-En-Scene. The cinematography has many moments where this actually happens, but for the most part, the camera is placed so that two characters, or an object and a character are placed in the foreground and background, allowing a sense of depth to be realised.

However, this film does lack in certain areas. The film is relatively short, but even so, after a while the novelty of this world of nothing becomes rather dull, and you wish to find some form of resolution within the plot. We can also argue that the acting is once again, questionable. These two characters are in a sense, unlikeable, therefore we feel no sympathy at any point for these characters. However, on a flip side of that, the chemistry and friendship between the two characters seems real enough, but there is something lacking.

Even so, i do rank this as a thoroughly enjoyable film! Do not let the trailer fool you into thinking this is another science-fiction horror film. It is much more of a comedy than that! It is indeed worth watching though, purely for the concept itself!