REALITi

Déjà vu is the recurring theme in low budget, Kiwi, sci-fi, thriller REALITi. The unsettling feeling one gets when all the evidence denies something you recently saw hits Vic repeatedly after his recent promotion. Then things start to get really weird for him. Around him his wife Meg, his lawyer Mandrake and George the security guard try to keep him grounded in reality, whereas Mandrake's wife Selma and doppelgänger of someone else (Michelle Langstone with her best feral smile) freaks him out. As does a bunch of activists with a strange tale of media manipulation.

This is not a film to let wash over you. Its a film for intense concentration. Yet I feel, even that would not allow the viewer to fully untangle the folds in time and separate hallucinations from reality. It is not a wizz-bang special effects sci-fi film, rather a cerebral one with a single idea that separates it ever so slightly from today's world.

It is a great advertisement for what can be done on a low budget (Doug Dillaman interviewed director Jonathan King about making REAILi).

I felt sorry for the film maker that his world premier only half filled the Paramount!

Ian's rating 3/5