Levels

Disclosure: I could only stand the first half of the movie. If anything significant happened at the second half, that I do not know.

The movie starts slow and progresses even slower. At a few times when you feel the pace is building up, it goes down again.

Acting is dull and forced. I tried to justify that by the theme of the movie but my personal legends like Amanda Tapping and. David Hewlett both deliver solid performances. The rest of the cast, unfortunately, need to learn from them and have a long way ahead.

Simple story aside, the conversations are also simple, shallow, uninspiring. I saw no creativity or even slightly entertaining part in any section. I felt like the movie tried to inspire some philosophical debate but falls short on each and every level.

To sum up, this should have been a much better experience. It wasn't.

Joe (Peter Mooney) seems to be jumping from world to world. He encounters Ash (Cara Gee), Hunter (Aaron Abrams), Oliver (David Hewlett), and a gun. The first thirty minutes are a confusing bore. Then comes the long info dump. It's not a good way to start and connect with these characters. For this sci-fi indie, the writing is the problem. There is no advantage to leaving the reveal late in the process. It needs to explain this world sooner. In the end, it doesn't sound wild enough. The acting is pretty good for a lower budget sci-fi. The special effects are fine. The movie probably lost me in the first 30 minutes.

Other reviews contrasting this Canadian production (presumably lower budget, but unsurprisingly good acting) with Free Guy and Matrix aren't wrong, but what we see with this entry into that universe is not only visually appealing (all three films have had mind-bending special effects), but shows a bit of heart and soul. It feels less mass produced. So what was needed was a bit more work on the development of the characters, a bit more plot development. I acknowledge the criticism of another reviewer that the exposition feels a bit dogmatic, but davka (actually, for me) that is necessary for the precious little character development we do have here, so I wouldn't have edited that out. Rather, I'd have added to the run-time a bit, to flesh out all of the characters, precisely because, in a digital universe, personality and individuality begins to matter in this one. Perhaps...our choices do matter.

Whilst the script could have used refinement, some of the visual gimmicks were heavy handed, at the heart of this story is real substance. Unlike a lot of Hollywood movies, especially in genre adjacent stuff, this movie feels like it has a genuine human element as well as a sort of wistful philosophy befitting the subject material.

The special effects are beyond what one would expect from a low budget, and indeed so is the acting, which successfully sells the premise. On the downside there's a little too much exposition and as mentioned before reliance on visual gimmicks.

But where you can watch most blockbuster movies and feel like you've been exposed to no real new ideas, or effected by the premise, the heart this movie has makes the sci-fi experience more personal - as science fiction should be, a reflection of our human experience.

All told, worth a watch IMO.

Welcome to the future, where everything is computerized but Siri still sounds like a computer from the 80's. I almost turned off the movie solely based on that annoying Siri voice.

"Levels" is the brainchild of Adam Stern and I think would do fairly good as a book, but here the casting is just horrible, it seems like they just took the first two actors that were available and the pacing of the movie is too slow and gets really boring at parts. The actors are not horrible, but here their performance is flat, and their chemistry is non-existent.

Adam Stern's got some hurdles to overcome before he can deliver a real blockbuster. For now, it's a niche indie film, likely drawing in Cara Gee fans from The Expanse, but unlikely to reach a broader audience.

Watch if you are a hardcore indie/sci-fi fan, I don't think I would recommend this otherwise it's just a dull watch. Exact score: 44 / 100.