Peripheral

Other than the cast and some snippets of good music the whole film is junk. It didn't need to be feature length. The use of technology was way over the top, yet primitive in execution. Imagine using a see-through 50" TV with bright blue lights to write a novel in the dark....and use a touch screen keyboard with keys the size of chicken nuggets - which numpty approved that?

The story is about a young introverted author who had success with her first book. It caused some sort of "revolution". However for some reason she has no money to pay for electricity so agrees a deal with her publisher to write a second book if they pay her bills, the deal also comes with a few caveats...she must use their "hardware" to write the book, instead of her trusty typewriter. The hardware is boosted with AI to aid her writing and for thr publisher to keep tabs on her progress. There's also a side story with Rosie Day (interesting voice) who steals the scenes she's in, it's a shame that was part of the film was so small.

The VFX and CG was overused and over the top - there really was no need to go so sci-fi with the "hardware" and have a stupid webcam with red lights. It was like watching an episode of BBC Three's Snog, Marry, Avoid fused with Black Mirror, made by The Asylum.

No idea how this film was funded, although it didn't need much of a budget, they could have skipped the terrible VFX/UI work and given that cash to charity. The message they tried to drive home was hamfisted and pretentious drivle.

I feel bad for the cast as they did their parts well and will forever have this film on their resume... the story and execution of the film was just bad. Not an enjoyable film you'll ever tell anyone to watch, unless you hated them.

This is yet another movie that really isn't as good as the writer intended and nowhere near as good as it could have been. So many writers these days have really, really good concepts and ideas to get across, but they get so caught up in being unique or Avant-garde that they end up making their work completely incomprehensible.

This movie had a great idea to convey how the lines between human creators and technology are being so blurred these days and how the corporate control of creative endeavors is destroying the creativity that should be inherent to the process. The beginning and ending of the movie did a good job of forwarding those ideas in an effective yet unique way. The problem was the entire middle half of the movie which made little to no sense even with drugs factored in!

Ever since the 1960s, there has been a growing number of writers, especially young writers, who have gotten the idea that leaving the audience with more questions about the movie when it is over than they had when it started is somehow a good thing. This. Is. A. Lie. You can have an excellent movie that leaves you with many questions, but if you are walking out of the theater or turning off the TV and are still wondering what in the hell the movie was about, the writer has done a BAD JOB OF WRITING! I know there are people who will be very opposed to my opinion, but the thing is, it is not just my opinion, it is the opinion of almost every person on this planet who is not trying to be a pretentious jerk by saying that people who don't "get it" are just not intelligent, deep, or special to understand.

Writers need to learn to write WHOLE stories, stories that have a beginning, a middle, and an end so that when the audience has finished the story, they can actually tell what it was about. Can writing schools please start teaching that again? Because I am really tired of watching movies with really great ideas that completely fail to come together because the writer never got past the idea stage, but still somehow made it into a movie.

So the setup is pretty simple and rife for some manner of scifi/horror examinations or exploitations; a broke writer grudgingly accepts an AI editor to basically live-edit her newest work as she writes and her publisher will pay her bills and such so she can keep writing.

Over time, they keep sending more upgrades and additions to the AI, to the point where the AI begins to manipulate the story itself.

But none of that is important or really tangential to whatever this film was going for. Instead, the writer, Bobbi Johnson, goes on drug-fueled writing binges rife with laughable "techie-techno" style music and flashing lights while writing some absurdly over the top purple prose. What little of it we are shown is essentially meaningless word salad. The tone of the film and its alleged theme seem to indicate this was intentional.

Along the way, Bobbi is harassed by a stalker who sends her video tapes, a brother who keeps pestering her to hold onto drugs and guns, a deadline that is thrust in her face at the very top of the neon-light eyesore of a computer she has to work from, and the fact that she is inexplicably coughing up ink and her fingers, hands, and arms are slowly becoming coated black with ink.

All of this keeps escalating and culminating in a finale that, without spoiling, seems to make little to no sense either to someone outside of the writing and publishing world, or else like the incoherent, esoteric rantings and ravings of a high-minded writer complaining about the state of modern literature without really having any specific issue beyond buzzwords like "technology" and "truth" and "lies" and "fourth estate".

What message is trying to be said is in no way reflected by what the film is actually showing us. The rising issues of "fake news", propaganda, and expanding corporate media are in no way reflected by Bobbi becoming inky and presumably hallucinating a lot and computer tentacles.

If this scattershot assortment of imagery and themes was supposed to say something meaningful to someone, it clearly wasn't someone like me.

I was quite intrigued by this bizarre and rather abstract piece of cinema. I enjoyed how it was written. I would have preferred more of a cyberpunk city setting to really sell it but I had fun watching it in a rather 'cant look away' curiosity. Reminded me a bit of 'Hardware' meets David Cronenberg meets David Lynch. Would I rewatch it? Probably not. But for a free one time watch as a cyberpunk fan it tickles a curiosity and has its merits, albeit nonsensical, absurdist, abstract or hallucinatory at times on purpose. Definitely better than your average cheaply written schlock. Would at least recommend!

Really weird in a David Cronenberg meets Bernard Rose kind of way, this low budget Brit movie has its merits and is worth watching if only for its 'what the hell was that all about?' feeling you get at the end. Good cameo from Tom Conti who probably came in from a long lunch to do the scene.