Identiteaze

From the brilliant mind of revolutionary artist Jessie Earl, Identiteaze is a stunning and captivating sci-fi short film. Set in a virtual reality limbo in a dystopic corporate controlled future, the film centers around two strangers with missing memories faced with an impossible decision and an unknown fate. An astounding cast, amazing writing and direction, and beautiful visuals highlight this exploration of identity, conformity, our place in the world, and what we owe to each other. Lovingly made by true fans of science fiction, the film features numerous nods to iconic works that aren't necessary for your enjoyment but that enhance the experience greatly if you are. The allegorical exploration of queer identities is heart wrenchingly potent, and relatable to anyone who's ever struggled to know who they are or what their place in the world should be. I cannot recommend this film enough. It is fully worth a membership to Nebula for this film alone!

No spoilers here.

As I mentioned in the title, I was hoping for and expecting more. I am familiar with the writer and a few of the actors, and I generally enjoy things that they produce. This is not the case here, as the writing feels very stilted and heavy on clichés, and the actors generally do a good job with the material that they are given to work with.

You would likely be better served watching something else, like Cube, and supporting LGBTQ+ stories elsewhere. The themes and ideas of the short are good ones but feel to be applied very poorly. Questions of identity in identiteaze is almost as comically simplistic as a bad episode of Star Trek.

First, I'm trying not to be parasocial here. I have followed Jessie Earle for a while and in general I like her content. So, you might want to keep that in mind.

I do like the idea of the movie. The themes are kind of in-your-face, but you have to do that in a short (even if this is pretty long for a short), where you don't have the length of a feature to explore these ideas. I'm boringly cis, but it's not hard to identify with what's going on.

The problem is that the dialogue is awkwardly cliched and I mean distractingly so. This is weird as Earle is a writer in her dayjob. The script definitely could have used another pass with just trying to say these things aloud. I mean, that is the place where you can do the cheapest work to improve the quality of the work as a whole in a small budget production such as this.

In the end, there is much to like here, but the dialogue does take away quite a bit.

Went into this worried to be honest, as I'm a fan of Jesse and wanted the best for her first big production. I was worried that I wouldn't like it, and I'm easily turned off from watching things due to my short attention span (thanks ADHD)...I'm typically hard to please. Although I'm a fan as mentioned before, I feel it is kindest to creators that you are honest with them and let them know upfront if you don't feel they would thrive in an endeavour, as ultimately it would lead to pain and disappointment for them down the line if you tell them white lies.

However I really enjoyed this short, of course there are parts of the dialogue that I would change as it was a tad too existential for me, but appreciated it for what it was trying to do.

I enjoyed how clean the film work was, the actors performed well and sets were pleasing to the eye.

Being as this is a start to what I hope is a long career for Jesse this is really promising and I look forward to seeing what she creates next, if she decides that this is ultimately what she wants to dedicate herself to.

There are a couple of moments in this short film that I found to be pretty funny, or clever, but overall I think even at its best, Identiteaze is just okay. And unfortunately, for most of its runtime, it feels pretty bland, and lacking in anything to really engage the viewer; with the central characters (character?) being rather ill defined, and seeming to have different personalities each line in order to facilitate the dialogue, and the plot being mostly pretty standard sci-fi tropes, and hinting at some greater scope without really telling, I feel, a satisfying story by the end of its 40 minutes. The actors did fine (although I found something a little off about Abigail Thorn's performance, tbh), and the effects were mostly decent for the kind of budget I'm assuming this had.

I am definitely interested to see what more nebula artists make with this kind of backing.