Warning is available from today on digital platforms across the UK.
Synopsis
Loneliness, death and the meaning of life, explored through vastly separate lives colliding in interweaving short stories set in future Earth.
Review
Sci-fi anthology Warning marks the debut feature of music video director Agata Alexander. The film is set in 2028 and spotlights six independent stories, each with a central focus on technology and its interplay with society and human existence. A space engineer floats in space, helplessly stranded, whilst a mortal woman meets her immortal in-laws. A man revisits the memories of his relationship when his ex was stalked by a shadowy presence, whilst an unwanted and elderly android carer is euthanized. A man utilises a company to temporarily inhabit the body of a teenage girl, whilst a woman contends with a malfunctioning household Alexa-esque hub called God that records her sins and good deeds.
The contents undoubtedly draw parallels to Charlie Brooker’s series Black Mirror, as well as recent sci-fi genre movies like Possessor, Upgrade and Reminiscence, but feel far less refined or developed.
The screenplay is co-written by Alexander alongside Jason Kaye and Rob Michaelson. When tackling so many different storylines, opting for a trio of writers may seem like a wise decision as a means of sharing the workload and allowing different authors to focus on different sections.
However, it can be quite messy in its interweaving of its distinctive anthology narratives. Indeed, religion is a consistent throughline of the film and sets the foundations for some potentially interesting discussion, such as whether God has abandoned us or we have abandoned God, but it all feels too superficial and ultimately unexplored. Meanwhile, the seemingly obligatory inclusion of a reference to the Coronavirus that is found in many low-budget, pandemic-era movies – here, it is ‘Covid-28’, the third mutation – does little to instill confidence.
For the most part, the dialogue is rather generic, if not poorly written, and provides little more than a surface level reading of ideas that we have seen presented elsewhere many times before. A piece of media that offers little more than a simple acknowledgement of our dependence on technology feels all but redundant. Some dialogue borders on comical and it all lacks nuance, substance or depth. Either the words of the characters serve as a pointed statement of the intended message or the viewer is forced to attribute their own meaning to sequences, leaving us to wonder ‘what’s the point?’ and, in turn, whether that is the point. Such a nihilistic and existential approach to filmmaking feels like a cheap exploitation of the collective consciousness without the nuance, depth or complexity required to earn our respect.
With a primary focus on the badness of technology, the characters often feel left by the wayside. The lack of character development makes it difficult to connect with the people in the stories or to even truly care about the stories themselves. Regardless of the mediocre dialogue and the film’s attention to superficial messages over character, some of the actors do their very best with the deficient material. Garance Marillier, Annabelle Wallis and Rupert Everett are the salvaging standouts. However, the performances are generally hit and miss, with some more amateurish and quite stilted offerings.
The film is undoubtedly best in its darker moments, where the concepts themselves offer greater affordances in spite of the shaky dialogue. The nature of the body-swapper, virtual stalker and robot euthanasia arcs means that they are at the very least able to provide some more engaging and impressive visuals, from POV cinematography to some surprisingly effective production design and visual effects. At the very least, cinematographer Jakub Kijowski deserves credit for his attempts to innovate and impress.
However, these technical elements are largely underutilised since the majority of the film demands a more generic approach, not allowing for such creative license. The stronger story concepts and ideas are bogged down by other, less effective narratives. At times, it feels as if the frequent aimless and almost arbitrary jumps between them are simply included in order to stave off fatigue and manufacture a method to maintain the viewer’s attention rather than for any specific narrative purpose.
Composer Clint Mansell, known for his work on the likes Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream and Moon, tries his hardest to bolster the atmosphere with his electronic score, although it could possibly come across to some as slightly generic. As with the film as a whole, the score feels derivative, as though it were a simple imitation of better work elsewhere.
Given the inconsistent tone of the film, it is difficult to discern whether the shock final twist is meant to be taken seriously at all and, whilst mildly surprising, it is almost impossible to care for the repercussions when so little care has been demanded for the film’s characters.
Verdict
A somewhat serviceable easy watch of a sci-fi genre anthology that has its moments, Warning nonetheless struggles with inconsistencies in its quality of writing, acting and direction, and is unfortunately unable to escape the towering shadow of similar, more refined, big-budget predecessors of the genre.
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