Saw this at the IMAGINE film festival 2015 in Amsterdam. A bit of romance, a bit of humor, a bit of tension, a bit of SciFi, and a bit of mystery, all of that mixed together in this surprising movie. The story line leaves us continuously guessing what is going on, and what could reasonably follow after that. In the final Q&A the director declared this to be a "hybrid" movie, and that is precisely what we got. We see several people and follow them while several mysterious things happen. It starts a bit colorless within an office and a date between two very different colleagues, in fact an odd couple no one would have expected them to go out together. According to the director, they are opposites and that was intentional. Narratively speaking they are the actual binding elements, to guide us through various genres like Romance, SciFi, Thriller and any combination of that.
No chance to outguess in which direction the story is going to develop. Whatever you anticipated, it is totally different from what really went on. And, more importantly, it was much better than I had thought. Strange things start happening, and it is good to consider that the overall theme. It is not exactly an "Action" film as IMDb misleadingly tells us, due to the mere fact that aforementioned odd couple cannot be considered super heroes by any definition.
Some additional notes from the final Q&A with the director: They used a lot of places in his home town in Virginia, which he could use for free, knowing his budget was small. The masked men in the library were dressed as they were on purpose, as this was the only way not to give immediately away that some SciFi was involved. These masked men behaved like any military force, secret police or drug gang. That their assignment was of a totally different nature, was to become clear much later, being one of the surprising twists in the proceedings.
All in all, the low budget does not glare us in the face at all. It was surprising and very entertaining, yet I don't think it will provide for the same mix of sensations when viewed a second time. Whatever happens to the main protagonists is very unusual, even a bit far fetched, and they survive only through sheer luck. Nevertheless, the genre mix was a nice find and it kept our attention throughout the running time.
