Transient

Ever wondered what Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was like if it were a horror film? Well, Transient fits the bill.

Full disclosure, I was a backer for this, and I know some of the people involved, so I might be a little biased, but then again, who isn't? That said, they didn't disappoint. But if there's one critique I could give, it's that it could've gone harder and more visceral, such as with the blood, gore, sex, and nudity, which could be boiled down to budget, among other things, yet this is a good start, and I'm in for whatever's next.

Also, nice placement of the book UBIK on the desk. I'm ashamed to say I've yet to read it, but it's on the list. I share the same first name as Philip K. Dick. And you can't spell "philosophical" without PHIL.

This was a glitchy, trippy sci-fi drama/thriller feature film in all the best ways! Incredible cinematography, vibes, and production design really grounded you in the story and the production did an excellent job of achieving a lot with very little resources--scaling the screenplay properly to tell an engaging story with just a few characters within a small amount of locations. Transient poses some interesting questions, too, exploring themes about the ethics of dwelling on memories and the lengths we go to when we wish to avoid conflict.

Chris Ruppert and Sugey Cruz put together an amazing story with Transient and put together an excellent cast and crew to bring the film to life.

What I loved most about this movie was its general accuracy as far as movie fantasy goes, and how it escalates the suspense over time.

The accuracy was pretty good for neural networks, AI, and I liked the nod to Karl Friston's "active inferencing" they drew out for the characters on the dry erase board.

The ending caught me by surprise a little, so that is always good!

Generally believable performances, solid supporting actors and the leads did "bro-tech" pretty well.

The movie itself is a mix between Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and a kind of Flatliners. I kind of dig how they mashed it together.

I wish there was a sequel.

Very pleased we got to see this at it's premiere. My wife and I loved it and were very impressed. She got scared and gripped my hand tight! She said it's the scariest movie she's seen in a long time, and it was mind-blowing. I really enjoyed it, too. It was a thought-provoking and gripping story, looked and sounded great, had talented actors all around. It was darkly beautiful. The music was epic. No spoilers, but there were some things in story that may be open to interpretation (or I misunderstood), so it created some good discussion on the way home. Looking forward to watching it again and seeing what these filmmakers get involved in next.

The storyline was brilliant, the cinematography was amazing! I was especially happy to hear that they Take pride in hiring from their local state of Pennsylvania for these projects!!

I love the sci-fi genre and this film had me guessing and wanting to watch it again to see what I might've missed. You can tell they took time to research the science behind the concepts that they use to tell the story. As a tech nerd, I loved how thru in math and real tech (Arduino), VSCode, whiteboard diagrams, TPUs and adjusting parameters while they are training the model all showed little technical details that added to setting up the storyline and making it feel authentic even to my domain level expert scrutiny.

I wait to see What these filmmakers come up with next! Bravo.

I can't wait to watch them again!!