Control

Understand that if you're watching this movie, you've already seen it.

Do you think it's the game Control? Yes. It is that... except worse. It's horror about a woman with psychic powers. But without the layers of juxtaposition with normal and the bizarre. All of the style is removed.

Do you think it's like the MCU with an Elizabeth Olson look-a-like sporting powers? Yes. It's that... Except worse. They wanted cool mom using psychic powers to kill people. But didn't really give her interesting things to do with those powers. You get some basic attacks and unchoreographed actors acting like they're in pain. They don't even film it well.

Do you think it's like the game, Portal? Yes. It's that... except worse. It is testing in a chamber with a mysterious robotic woman's voice giving instructions. But none of the whimsy or fun.

Everything about this movie is a ripoff of something famous and better. You've seen every reveal and surprise and interesting thing this film has to offer. But you've already seen it better.

The film techniques seem unrelated to what you're watching with the cameras in random positions and shifting randomly between cuts without meaning or direction. The actors appear to have been told to take as much time as they can with everything they do, to the point of it being awkward for them to do mundane tasks like walking across a room. Even the actors didn't know how to make this slow of a pace seem natural.

The lack of care from the film makers is painful. And an insult to whoever paid for this movie to be made. It's an insult to the actors, and an insult to the audience. Crucial details like how much time is left on the clock are used to add tension, which is completely deflated as the clock regularly has time clearly added or removed between shots. They just didn't care. A character even calls out that there's only 60 seconds left, only for the next shot to show it being closer to 90 seconds.

If you can avoid seeing this film, please do. I give it a 2 star because there COULD have been something good here. The one set was designed well. No other sets were. And nothing about this movie should inspire other films. I hope I'm the last one to see this movie.

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.

I love slow burn movies, and non existent funding movies, when their done well.

Whilst this one was almost devoid of funding, it was also devoid of progress.

It took over an hour for anything beyond the most simplistic testing to happen, next to zero exposition in that time as well. Only to switch into warp speed for the last 20 minutes, but it also didn't go too far from the starting line.

Acting wasn't terrible, but many of the choices made by the 2 characters were ridiculous.

Eileen has psychokinesis, I can accept that without issue. SHE accepted it as evidenced in the testing... come to the test of putting a ball in a bucket....... nope we can't do that, BUT we'll remove 16 screws from the tables legs easily enough to no gain, and then move the ball in to the bucket.

Ditto when Roger is being killed in sand, no point trying to use her powers in stopping the flow of sand, or demolishing the cage he's in, go back to brute physical strength, of which she has none, and fail like a moron.

I would love it if just once in these movies the characters would use their psycho/telekinetic powers to rip out an entire wall of their cage and go on a rampage.

There were good ideas in here, but basically the writer and director were not up to the task of producing a good movie. For example: the subject/lead is quite emotional and animated during the first 2/3 of the movie and during the last 10 minutes. But, during "phase 3" they had the actress walk around deadpan like Bride of Dracula. It was genuinely embarrassing.

The action scenes toward the climax literally repeat. If they did one more close up of her contorting hands, I would have stopped watching. I guess they didn't have the money or creativity to make something progressive and interesting?

To be fair, there are some engaging elements too, but- blah.

A very basic story of a woman with memory loss who wakes up in some sort of secret research facility and is forced to use telekinesis.

Obviously very low-budget, but nonetheless reasonably well-produced (it never feels super cheap) that takes place almost entirely in a single room, with just two main actors.

There is surely(?) no way that the title is coincidental with the 2021 Remedy video game "CONTROL" that has a similar premise (about a woman who has to use telekinesis to escape/liberate a facility). The protagonist here even looks a bit like the video game counterpart. Clearly wasn't officially licenced though, since the connection is not in the credits.

The acting is fine for the most part, although there are only three cast members (wife, husband, daughter). The special effects are serviceable and do what is required without being flashy.

It's a take it or leave it type of rating here; for most people there will be much better things to watch than this.