Black Gate

Monday, July 20, was a relatively short day for me at the Fantasia Festival, but one I was looking forward to with great curiosity. At 5 PM I was going to the De Sève Theatre to watch a collection of science-fictional short films: Fantasia’s International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase 2015 (to give the screening its official name) would show nine films ranging from four to twenty minutes long from seven different countries. Afterwards I’d stick around to see the world premiere of Meathead Goes Hog Wild, a Chicago-set movie about a man pushed to the edge of sanity. It ended up an interesting mixed bag. To go through everything I saw in order:

“Welcome to Forever,” an American short written and directed by Laddie Ervin, clocks in at 13 minutes and opens with a newscast setting up a future in which minds can be uploaded into the cloud and then downloaded into robot bodies. We learn that 112 million people have taken advantage of this technology, sparking protests — and then also learn that a nasty virus has struck at the cloud consciousnesses. The film then focusses in on a small-scale story of a man (Clive Hawkins) trying to clean up one of the many loose ends the virus left.

It’s effective enough, but doesn’t entirely come together; the introductory section and the main story feel disconnected. And the setting’s much larger than the story, so the themes of the main dramatic action are out of sync with the science-fictional elements. The world’s too big, the questions raised by the uploading technology too varied. And while the film looks sharp, the characters don’t feel real. Oddly, the film’s own success at sketching the setting undermines it: the world feels so interesting I want a story that explores it more deeply. As it is, the movie’s an interesting piece, but I don’t think it’s a total success.

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