Peripheral

I was quite intrigued by this bizarre and rather abstract piece of cinema. I enjoyed how it was written. I would have preferred more of a cyberpunk city setting to really sell it but I had fun watching it in a rather 'cant look away' curiosity. Reminded me a bit of 'Hardware' meets David Cronenberg meets David Lynch. Would I rewatch it? Probably not. But for a free one time watch as a cyberpunk fan it tickles a curiosity and has its merits, albeit nonsensical, absurdist, abstract or hallucinatory at times on purpose. Definitely better than your average cheaply written schlock. Would at least recommend!

I was interested in this because of Hannah Arterton and it was odd to see her in such a grim movie after the upbeat Walking On Sunshine.

Overall it's a basic premise; human against out of control technology, the conflict reminded me somewhat of HAL 9000 in 2001 A Space Odyssey but without the filmmaking skill.

I guess there have been so many films of this genre that they need to make the story vague or convoluted in order to stand out, but all this one does is make the viewer ask 'why was this needed?' There are a lot of puzzling and unresolved scenes which is not necessarily a wrong thing but in this film the viewer doesn't get any background information or character development to have a chance to connect the dots.

I felt no sense of peril during the film nor a sense of triumph at the end. I pretty much didn't care.

Really weird in a David Cronenberg meets Bernard Rose kind of way, this low budget Brit movie has its merits and is worth watching if only for its 'what the hell was that all about?' feeling you get at the end. Good cameo from Tom Conti who probably came in from a long lunch to do the scene.

Young London based writer Bobbi Johnson (Hannah Arterton) is so skint that she can't pay her bills. She likes to write old school by using a typewriter but her publisher convinces her to use a state of the art computer that features artificial intelligence, and so her nightmare begins. Quite an interesting story, very strange at times but thankfully I was able to stick with it and make sense of the ending. Very much in the vein of David Cronenberg and his movie Videodrome, with a splash of David Lynch. In one scene she is raped (?) by the computer, reminded me of Evil Dead but with wires and leads instead of tree branches and vines. The small cast all do a good time, nice to see Jenny Seagrove. Not a movie that I'd watch again but it isn't bad.

This movie was quite the bizarre fest as a writer gets introduced to TECH that helps her write better. Haha.... I don't know quite how I feel about this one. So I'm going to give it a 5/10