In the Cloud

I saw on tv. Maybe the history is not the most original, but has some moments and a mix of interesting elements. It's not a movie for a 4/10 maybe near a 6 for normal people, 7 for teenagers and a 5 - 5.5 for sci-fi fans.

Out of three reviews, two of them are gushing 10-star from people who only signed up to IMDB a week or two ago and have no activity other than leaving those reviews. Don't trust them.

... for the nice aerial shots of "London", and then it's all downhill from there as an inane plot kicks in, executed by awful writing, acting, and most of all, directon and cinematography: 5-second shots with almost constant camera movement within the shots will make most viewers seasick within 15 minutes. No hope of a rescue by interesting plot twists, however, as it's entirely predictable to the end. Amateur hour film-making at its worst.

Science-fiction is the one genre of movies with the an unique ability to ask questions about technology, its influence on the human condition and the future in general. Some sci-fi movies do that brilliantly while being really entertaining at the same time. In the Cloud sounded as one of these movies, especially considering the cast which includes Gabriel Byrne, who I've always associated with good cinema.

Sadly, my assumptions were completely wrong. In the Cloud is not a good movie. It's not even a decent movie, which is quite surprising seeing that it has a pretty strong cast. The actors are good, but they simply didn't have a lot to work with. The beginning of the plot is quite promising: a genius scientist claims he's found a way to map a human brain and preserve people's memories forever. Unfortunately, soon a million things start to happen at once: terrorist attacks, CIA wanting to take over the project, a mysterious organisation, drug-filled trips into the sicentist's memories, etc. It would be okay in a series, but in a movie with a running time of 1.5 hour it's too much. It is really hard to follow the plot and its super-fast pacing means that the characters don't really have any personality and in result I found it impossible to care about any of them.

I also have to mention special effects, as they are truly awful. I know that the movie isn't a blockbuster, so I wasn't expecting too much, but they were still able to disappoint me. They look like something out of a 1990s movie. In 2018 even small productions can afford decent CGI. To make things worse, often the special effects are really distracting, especially in the scenes exploring memories. If anything they make a bad movie even worse. I wouldn't recommend In the Cloud to anyone.

Like most of the movies starred Justin Chatwin, this is over the head for most of the viewers. As a sci-fi thriller film it focuses on a tech company, which is developing software capable of uploading a person's consciousness and memories to a virtual space. There is a lot of psychedelic drug referenced and shown used in the movie. But there is no special sort of instrument is shown in here, that's a huge downside. What is the fun and benefit of a sci-fi film, if you can't see a few future technology.