Reversion Review
By David Kempler
Reversion Needs Revision
Virtual reality has become a prominent part of our everyday lives and in our television and film entertainment. Director and co-writer Jose Nestor Marquez's sci-fi thriller, "Reversion", adds proposes another avenue where this new technology may possibly taking us, with entirely mixed results.
It opens with a commercial extolling the latest breakthrough in this technology. It's a pharmaceutical ad announcing
Oubli, which looks like a piece of jewelry one wears around your ears. It is activated by an app on your phone. Once the app engages, it enables the wearer to go back to a happy time in their life, where they feel like they are actually back there again. It's designed to remove you from a depressing current state of mind. Envision an anti-depressant minus the drug delivery system of pills, injections, and other methods. Sounds pretty good, but there wouldn't be a story if it was all sunshine and lollipops.
Sophie (Aja Naomi King) is the daughter of the inventor of
Oubli, played by Colm Feore, and she is in charge of the marketing campaign rollout. She is also an unwitting guinea pig for the product. The day before the big public announcement, she learns that she has an implant behind the ear sporting the jewelry. She also learns that daddy's project may not be everything it is cracked up to be, although it may be her brain that is not functioning all that accurately.
The first half of "Reversion" tries very hard to hide the truth from us, in the hopes of creating crushing tension for the viewers. Yes, of course we want to know what is going on, but after a while of not finding out, not caring starts to outweigh curiosity. That's the primary problem. While it's clear that the whole project is nefarious, Marquez downplays it until it's so low-key that it takes away from its supposed importance. Maybe "Reversion" could have benefitted from a few more revisions.
