Jason says: “As much
as it’s fun to be one of the first people to see a movie, it’s kind of
frustrating when you want to talk about the thing you’ve seen right
away, but the only people you can do so with are the ones who were in
that room – and, because it’s a film festival, we’re all rushing to the
next movie. THE RECONSTRUCTION OF WILLIAM ZERO is likely to be one of
my favorites of the festival, and I want more folks to see it, but I do
not want to give things away.
“It starts out playing a few tricks with time, as geneticist William
Blakely (Conal Byrne) rushes from his home with wife Jules (Amy
Seimetz) and son Kevin to get to work. At the same time, he’s being
revived by his twin in a new home, suffering from near-complete amnesia
after a stupid automobile accident, learning anew that he and Jules
have been separated for four years. He’s got to relearn everything –
and he’s been making a start via experimental methods – and some of
what he learns is strange and horrifying.
“There’s a throwback quality to RECONSTRUCTION, from the eighties-style
production company logos to a lot of the set decoration and costuming –
in fact, I’d peg it for a period piece if not for the mobile phones,
RFID keycards, and tablet computers that show up as well (it’s
occasionally kind of distracting if you tend to watch closely enough to
try and find an in-story reason for the old tech aside from the
atmosphere it creates). Mostly, though, that comes from the way the
movie builds and paces itself – director Dan Bush and co-writer Conal
Byrne establish a chilly atmosphere early on, letting the audience and
characters in on what’s happening early enough that they can watch
things play out while also letting the audience chew on the ethics of
the situation. A good chunk of the effects budget is used on having
Conal Byrne play against himself.
“This is something to be thankful for, because Byrne is fantastic. It
is tremendously important that the audience be able to tell the
difference between his roles very quickly in any given scene, but the
way that the story twists and turns means that he and Bush must stay
away from some of the really obvious signifiers in make-up, wardrobe,
or particular tics often used to differentiate one twin from another.
Instead, he often manages to come up with chilly or empathetic versions
of the same mannerisms that are seldom particularly broad but always
easy to pick up on. And it’s not just that he differentiates the
performances; he’s pretty great no matter who he’s playing at a given
moment, whether heartbreaking or monstrous.
“It’s not quite a one-man show, but everyone else is decidedly
secondary. They are excellent supporting roles, though, particularly
Amy Seimetz as the similarly broken Jules and Adam Fristoe as the
corporate investigator who thinks he’s got a handle on what is going on
with William (although, given the nature of the movie, it’s a bit
distracting that he looks somewhat similar to Byrne). We don’t see a
lot of the staff at Next Corporation, but Lake Roberts, Tim Habeger,
and Melissa McBride do good work establishing an atmosphere there
without populating it with overbearing stereotypes.
“That adds an extra layer of creepiness to what is already a science
fiction movie with plenty of disturbing implications, and while the
film doesn’t dig into those too much, it handles the main issues very
well. There is some creepy bathtub science going on in the Blakely
residence, and Bush manages to get the spine tingling at the idea
without gross-out shocks, for instance. He also plays a nice shell
game with the twins when the time comes, including one excellent
mid-film sequence that has a lot going on that the audience needs to
know but which never needs to stop and explain what we are seeing.
There are some holes and jumps, but Bush and company handle the
important stuff well enough that the audience likely won’t mind.
Indeed, it’s a great little movie, right down to the descriptive and
evocative title (please, whoever winds up distributing this, do not go
[back] to a generic ‘The _____’ name). Audiences looking for heady,
suspenseful, character-based science fiction should not pass this up
when it surfaces for a wider audience. 4.75
cats
“Seen 20 July 2014 in Salle D.B. Clarke (Fantasia Festival: Paradigm
Shifters, DCP)” |
