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This is all to say it’s not much to look at aside from its sci-fi film clips or archival footage, though digging through them provides just as much insight as its interviews. It’s all meant to be uncanny and off-putting in a particularly digital way, but mostly captures a kind of muddiness-still in a particularly digital way, though. Then there are the animated segments of their experiences (either untextured videogame models or uncannily fleshy reenactments) and the low-res environmental tours extrapolated from a dreamy version of Google Earth.
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These talking heads are morphed into VRChat-esque avatars, like a shiny polygonal swordsman or a robotic Anubis, which provides charming bits of deadpan humor and visual interest to what are essentially just Zoom calls. Or repeat viewings of The Matrix, of course. They all sound like people trying to convey the perception-altering aftereffects of an acid trip, just induced either by rigorous self-examination or sensory deprivation chambers. Dick’s talk eventually leads into his modern-day compatriots, who do their damnedest to explain their shared, yet different, existential crises. Dick about a weirdo drug-fueled vision he once had, the doc’s split into chapters attempting to explain that “we’re really in The Matrix” idea. A Glitch in the Matrix never inspires that level of curiosity with its existential musings. It’s absurd, engaging and ultimately makes you want to look at one of the best horror movies ever made with a magnifying glass.
A glitch in the matrix full#
That doc allows a bunch of obsessives-ranging from convincing analysts to straight-up crackpots-to unpack their theories about Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining in full force. That latter strength is Ascher’s bread and butter: Ascher’s done harrowing docs before ( The Nightmare) and straight-up horror (a segment of ABCs of Death 2), but A Glitch in the Matrix is most like his Room 237.
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The long-winded documentary is engrossing in spurts and isn’t particularly interested in convincing us of anything, but it’ll at least serve as the jumping-off point for a strange conversation or two. A Glitch in the Matrix, from director/editor Rodney Ascher, considers simulation theory-the long-running genre playground and thought experiment-using a handful of zealots and a slew of pop cultural pulls, following the rabbit hole through its history from Greek philosophers to wannabe stoner iconoclasts. What if we all live inside a simulation? If you’re Neo, you might reply with “Whoa.” If you’re anyone that’s played a videogame in the last 20 years or, say, lived through a quarantine by transitioning from screen to screen, you might remain relatively unfazed compared to Keanu Reeves’ sci-fi chosen one.