The Reconstruction of William Zero

I didn't make it through to the end of this film, I have to be honest. Why? ...Because dear gawd it was dragged out far too much to death. It was a genuine sheer effort from the very start just to keep going in watching it. There was decent actors in it - and they tried they best - but my gawd, did it drag on and on! It was painful.

The hope of a good story was there in the films description. There was glimpses of possible promise things was about to get better - but it never materialised. Such a shame. After over half way through I gave up the fight to find something to keep me interested while it dragged on. It was actually depressing watching it. Its atmosphere of the film in parts didn't help as it dragged on. If you are thinking of buying this on DVD or HD to watch it, don't!

It took me three attempts to watch this movie. Five minutes into the first attempt I went to sleep. Of course that's not fair. No movie is that bad. OK, very few movies are that bad. On the second attempt I got to about 20 minutes in before falling asleep. On the third attempt, after being well rested, I completed the movie.

By now you're probably wondering why was I so committed to watching this movie. I don't know. So, the one word I have for this movie is: somniferous. That is to say sleep inducing.

"The Reconstruction of William Zero" was a movie about cloning, and not a good one. Dr. William Blakely (Conal Byrne) is the subject of the cloning and two wrongs don't make a right. In other words, if you take one lifeless character and clone him what do you have? Yes, that's two lifeless characters.

The story was thrown together. There was a little twist in there but that did nothing to save it. Somehow we were supposed to care about him and his wife whom we saw for all of five minutes. It was just one slow, drawn out drama detailing number 5,362 of why cloning is bad.

No, its not directed by spike jonze and it's certainly not written by Charlie Kaufman . But for a couple of hours of free-ish entertainment on VOD it's the kind of material those in love with fantasy/scifi settings will certainly enjoy regardless.

Acting is on point, plot is very solid, and photography is good. Don't expect to have your mind blown but perfect covid watching for the scifi buff who doesn't mind low-fi.

When Dan Bush (Co-Writer, Director, Co-Screen Editor) and Conal Byrne (Co-Writer, Main Character Actor) sat down to put this project together, I'm sure they were enthusiastic and knew they had an interesting story to tell. They do.

However, either because of run-time editing or they were negligent in the telling of the story, the viewer is given too much information too soon in some ways (first plot twist revealed at about 19 minutes in; second at about 31 minutes) and not enough information too late, if at all, in other ways.

Meanwhile, one has to fight against the sleep inducing, hauntingly slow, lullaby-like synthesized keyboard and "rain-on-a-pond" two-fingered piano poking that carries throughout the entire film.

The cinematography adds to the vertigo of sleep in that, at no point does it seem, the camera operator/director can make up his/their mind if something (other than Conal Byrne) should be or remain in focus. There are a few times when we are seeing things through another's failing eyesight. Fine. But that wouldn't justify all the other times.

There is a cast of characters in this film but we don't get to know them or care about them except for Amy Seimetz's character, "Jules". Ms.Seimetz did an admirably fine job to establish her character and insert "Jules" into the viewers consciousness despite so little screen time.

Conal Byrne performed very well with the different but somewhat similar personalities he had to keep distinct for the viewer. I'm not surprised, however, since he co-wrote the story and didn't have to create the character after landing the role since he wrote the role for himself. Nevertheless, he showed skill and talent in his portrayals.

This film is categorized as "sci-fi"/"drama" in the same respect 'Flowers For Algernon' is. But this is no "Flowers For Algernon"... would have been nice if it were as 'William Zero' is only part way to achieving was was achieved in 'Algernon'.

"The Reconstruction of William Zero" shines as a story but this sleep-inducing version of it begs an awakening in a remake.

The premise of this story is very promising - a thriller based on the concept of an apparent twin who turns out not to be all he, at first, thinks he is.

At the risk of not wanting to spoil the movie, I won't say more about how things turn round, but the focus is always on the lead actor, Conal Byrne, who has to play William and William Zero and another allied character with enough distinction between the three that you can keep up with exactly which one he is meant to be.

Thankfully Conal is up to the task and switches characters enough to be identifiably 'different' until the last chapter of the movie when the distinctions deliberately become blurred. As William Zero he has to appear practically clueless as to what is happening to him in the beginning and he almost pulls this off.

Unfortunately the script advances too quickly for us to get a real feeling for the dilemma in which he finds himself and the progression, from what seems to be amnesia to the dawning of understanding exactly what he is, happens abruptly and without enough reaction to be credible.

Similarly the reactions of the other characters in this story are also hurried and, therefore, appear unrealistic. Amy Seimetz, as the (ex) wife, does her best but isn't given enough dialog to carry through her predicament. In the end her conversion to the version of reality that she sees is too sudden and hardly seems in character.

Overall I felt the screenplay was generally too predictable at times, whilst leaving a lot of questions unanswered at others (presumably to try and engender a feeling of mystery). There are twists and turns in the plot which, with better direction or a superior screenplay, could have been more entertaining, even shocking.

The denouement is laughably simple (and requires another improbable leap of faith) and turns out to be what you might have been expecting all along. Of course there's no other outcome that could happen, but to give so many clues along the way, I felt, was unnecessary and leaves a limp ending.

I'm left wondering how many scenes were heavily cut and are left littering the cutting room floor? The progression of the story feels heavily edited and this is the sort of movie where a typical preview of a more twisted, mysterious version might have elicited comments of 'I didn't understand it', forcing a different direction before the launch.

This should have been a movie which throws up more questions, especially moral ones, than there are answers but, in that respect, it fails. On the thriller side it also doesn't score as highly as it could have done. At the end I was just left feeling that this could have been so much better.