Alfred Van Der Zwam
Australian production designer James Croke (Shift) decided there must be more to life than prepping film sets for other people, so he decided to try his hand on his own first full feature film. Written and directed by himself, and filmed in Bangkok with the help of a local crew from Kaos Entertainment, his debut film Latency is essentially a chamber piece centred around the reclusive Hana (Sasha Luss, Shattered, Sheroes).
She’s a former pro-gamer who’s now over the hill and struggling to make ends meet as a VR game tester. She’s also trying to cope with her severe agoraphobia, a condition that prohibits her to set one step outside of her decrepit apartment, with the aid of her neighbour and loyal-to-a-fault bestie Jen (Alexis Ren, Dotty & Soul, The Enforcer) who gets her supplies and keeps her company when she’s off from work.
The film opens effectively with someone or something forcing entry into Hana’s apartment and soon enough, her place is flooded with monsters trying to get her. She’s shooting the monsters down gaming-style until she discovers a glitch in one of them, prompting her to pause the game – and the viewer into the awareness it was actually a VR-hologram all along.
Her gaming hardware setup is quite impressive and would even make the people at Langley’s mouths water, even though it feels a bit at odds with Hana’s apparently dire financial situation. Croke’s experience as a production designer shines through though with the meticulous attention to detail for his set; especially the acoustic treatment of Hana’s gaming lair caught my attention and appreciation.
Next, we’re introduced to Hana’s secluded life that mostly elapses sitting behind a set of computer screens, grouped in Tetris-style – something of a theme throughout the film – intermittent by bathroom breaks, spag-bol-with-Redbull breaks, sleep breaks, and the occasional fitness exercises to stay in shape. And there’s Jen’s cheer-bringing visits, and the occasional but increasingly pushy payment pleas from behind the front door, coming from her landlord whom she’s racked up a house-rent debt with.
Her daily grind gets shaken up when she receives a highly-anticipated parcel containing a device, a diadem labelled Omnia, that promises to be an electroencephalographic wearable designed to enhance the gaming experience by interfacing with- and latching on to her own nervous system. And here, a brisk 15 minutes into its slender 90-minutes runtime, is where we get into the film’s meat-and-potatoes.
As Hana goes through the calibration process that her Omnia requires to operate fully in tune and in synch with her, she excitedly discovers how it boosts her gaming skills and this opens the viable possibility for her to join a gaming competition that could earn her a big paycheck, big enough to put her financial woes in the rearview mirror.
But as she merges with the device, her traumatic youth also comes back to haunt her, blurring her reality with the virtual one that Omnia blends in for her, making it increasingly difficult for Hana to tell one from the other. And when haunting apparitions, possibly of the supernatural kind, are also introduced into the mix, and faithful Jen suddenly stops showing up, Hana’s fears take the perceptive reigns for her as she gradually loses her grip on her sanity.
Within his obvious budgetary constraints, Croke manages to make his film work marvellously on a visual level. The entire movie takes place inside the confines of Hana’s apartment, barring a few shots on the hallway outside, and he makes this limited scope work in his favour with claustrophobic visuals and effective lighting. The movie is also surprisingly effects-heavy, belying its budgetary limitations, all by design and CG, as Latency’s world essentially displays a blend of a VR-game world and Hana’s real one.
Croke also manages to get a solid performance out of his lead, Sasha Luss, on whose shoulders the film almost completely rests. Her character’s close friendship with neighbouring plucky pal Jen, even though she’s likeable and acted acceptably well enough, doesn’t really believably convey itself though; Jen’s doting motivations remain obscured and Alexis Ren is, and plays her character as, a stereotypical, almost to the point of being archetypical, Californian whose chemistry with the Russian-American, noticeably British-schooled Luss conceivably already would have been problematic from the moment they were cast.
It doesn’t really hurt the movie so much; acting performances are fine when seen individually. But a bit of actor-coaching would probably have gone a long way, and the film could have been better for it had the friendship between Hana and Jen been more carefully established.
Latency needed a couple of trims for strong words and images to avoid an R-rating. I don’t know what scene parts had to be cut, but the movie looks surprisingly intense for a PG-13 product, and it looks nowhere near any of those watered-down horror films the likes of which we all too often get from the industry’s assembly lines. What Croke did noticeably do to get the coveted rating pass is muting a few f-bombs here and there, which got a chuckle out of me.
See, he didn’t replace it with ‘freak’ or ‘freaking’ in post with ADR, as is customary, but just took 20dB off in the audio mix in the critical split-seconds to make it drown in the soundtrack towards the level of being barely audible. It made me think of the Google censors (mostly outsourced to Cognizant, an India-based Company) whose guidelines restrict f*ck, but will give a pass to f**k. The times we live in, eh?
Croke deliberately presents his film as a portrayal of Hana’s confined world. That’s a world that may be real, or VR, or even supernatural, or any given blend of all the above. Some viewers may find this annoying or confusing, and I can see how Latency could be frustrating for people who want their movies presented in a clearly recognizable reality within their narrative framework.
The film’s final conclusion in particular will also be divisive and not be appreciated by everyone, but to me, it made perfect sense within the narrative and visual framework Croke designed for his movie, putting a lot of attention and care in visual cues and details. His film also demands that attention from its viewers.
For all its visual proficiency and meritorious acting, Latency does have its dramatic issues. Croke puts Hana in a confined world that expands thanks to the neural interface Omnia, but she also becomes its passive victim. It merges with her, downloads her memories, mixes them as VR into her (thus also our) perception of her reality, throws in some possibly supernatural spooks for good measure and Hana just kind of haplessly goes with it.
She doesn’t put up a real fight, neither against Omnia nor against her agoraphobia, nor against her youth traumas, and the absence of stakes and urgency renders her a passive protagonist. But aside from Jen, who’s clueless anyway on what’s going on and doesn’t really amount to much until one plot resolution near the film’s conclusion, Hana is the only character whose plight we’re following.
As a result, particularly the middle section of the movie tends to drag in places. Visuals, scares and action still manage to hold the attention, but it’s short on suspense as we’re watching Hana getting thrown from one scary situation into the next inside her apartment without her really doing anything about it.
She emotes adequately and never goes overboard, but in spite of Luss’ best efforts, the onscreen proceedings are not as suspenseful as they otherwise could have been had there been given more dramatic depth to Hana’s situation. The film picks up steam again however in the final act as it moves deeper into horror territory, bringing all the visual threads and cues together into one singular focal point.
Latency is an admirable, and note- and watch-worthy film that’s surprisingly effective thanks to Croke’s visual flair and Luss’ dedicated performance, but its weaknesses keep it from reaching the indie-greatness it could have had. Still, it’s an interesting and promising debut, obviously made with care, dedication, love, balls and talent. Its presentation is visually nothing short of amazing considering what Croke must have had to work with; it has an interesting (if not so original) premise and story to tell, and it’s well-acted. So, with all that in order, you should definitely consider giving it a look if you don’t mind the sometimes confounding narrative.
Latency is currently available on various Digital Platforms via Lionsgate.
Where to watch Latency
Our Score
