“Most
Intelligent Philosophical Sci-Fi I Have Seen This Millennium”
That and a
100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes is enough for this review, I have a compulsion
to tear this thing to shreds just for that quote. No, this movie is not
intelligent, Philosophical maybe. Want to prove this movie isn’t intelligent.
The concept – human beings operate at different frequencies that determine how
lucky they are. THAT’S NOT WHAT FREQUENCY MEANS! Frequency is a measure of the
speed of oscillation, generally associated with sound and/or vibrations. It has
nothing to do with luck. I’ll get to what the consequences of being different
‘frequencies’ is but in the review.
So went
straight to DVD, made some money I’m sure, minimal budget and a work of some
Darren Paul Fisher. He did Inbetweeners, but not the one you’re thinking of,
and a movie called Popcorn which was slammed by the 3 critics that watched it.
Let’s get on
with this, shall we
After a set
of opening credits so lazy it’s just text in background we open with an apple
rolling down the corridor, how riveting. We meet our lead, Marie-Curie Fortune,
and our other lead Isaac-Newton Midgley. No, I’m not making those names up.
They’re about to undergo a test to determine their ‘frequency’ it involves
doing something blindfolded…
Anyway,
turns out Marie has a really ultra-high frequency and Isaac, who prefers to be
called Zak, has an ultra-low frequency. They’re supposed to only be able to
meet for a minute before something bad happens, in this case, the weather
decides to be a dick to Zak, raining on him whilst Marie is stone dry. This is really f*cking stupid but let's not dwell on that, yet.
Turns out
her high frequency comes at a cost, which is lack of human empathy. I’d find
this easier to buy if the first thing she did wasn’t give Zak back his apple
after he dropped it.
She created
a device at the science fair that’s able to find compatible matches for people
based on their frequencies. The teacher, Mrs Anderson, hoped to persuade her to
use it to find potential friends but she’s less inclined to do so. Oh and I
hate Mrs Anderson with every fathom of my being, we'll get back to her later.
She doesn’t
really understand any sensation of human contact. So she begins experimenting
with Zak. They meet again in a field, and after a minute this time an
aeroplane drops luggage on him.
OK, there’s
unlucky and then there’s contrived bullsh*t. If you wanted me to buy this we had to
see the sequence of events that lead to the luggage being dropped from the
plane. As it is, I don’t buy it. Zak
backs away and the pair of them get detention… I’d like to point out that’s not
very lucky for Maria is it?
After a
weird transition, we head into a third experiment, this time in a corridor,
after a minute he lies down, unwell I think.
Experiment 4
is outside, he asks about touching her, and yes it’s as creepy as that sounds
but she denies him on the grounds that it’ll change the variables. Yeah, empathy is ability to see things from the perspective of another. Someone who
lacks empathy does not necessarily lack emotion. Anyway, he’s chased away by a
dog sound effect
In
experiment 5 he asks her to graduation, she agrees and they wait a full year
before making contact again. She explains her lack of human emotion, she
doesn’t love him and can never love
We cut to
several years later. Maria gets a seat on the underground after someone vacates
at the last second, finds a £20 note on the ground and doesn’t do the
responsible thing of handing it over to the police. She goes to a shop to
collect something and despite being a week early (why are you trying to collect
something a week before it’s due?) it’s just arrived. The cashier comments how
lucky it is she has the exact change. OK, yes, it’s lucky that she found the
exact amount she needed on the ground but the Cashier doesn’t know that. What
did she expect her pay with, a £20.01 note?
It’s her
birthday, and Zak arrives at her party. To her surprise he can last more than
a minute and you’re beginning to see possibly the biggest weakness of this
movie. It’s primarily just people standing and talking. To be clear, it doesn’t
get any more exciting as the movie goes on, it’s just people talking the entire
movie. And it’s so utterly utterly
So, after
that scene of talking let’s cut to, what else, another scene of them talking.
They’d agreed to meet in train house café. Zak says he believes that through
contact and maintaining close proximity they can alter their frequencies, his
to be higher and luckier and hers to be lower and more empathetic. They begin
holding hands, and Maria claims to be feeling, the room shakes and this is
close to tension as you’re gonna get.
But if you
want to know what happens next, too bad, as we’re back to more talking, and
reliving a lot of the same moments from Zak’s perspective. This movie has
chapters… this entire story would be better told in a book, they’d be less
restricted by budget, could add some excitement but without cutting all the
talking.
After
discovering his low frequency, it’s recommended that Zak be transferred to a
special school. If you’re implying being unlucky is the same as having special
needs then I have one thing to say to you and it begins with a…
Zak wants to stay here, much to his mother’s delight. His mother plays no
significant part in this movie. He heads to a friend’s house, his friend named
Theo. His father greets him at the door and helps him discover a bit of musical
talent whilst Theo’s doing… we’ll get to that.
Zak knocks
over his thing at the science fair, much to the b*tch who teaches them’s
chargin’. “You can’t blame your low frequency for everything” says the same
b*tch who said his low frequency means he won’t accomplish anything.
Theo’s
project is examined next, it’s some kind of prediction machine but it’s hard to
tell everything, the b*tch who teaches them dismisses it as a fire alarm goes
off. He and Zak look to particular cures to his low frequency. First a magnet
that only gets him locked in a corridor. A pill which results in him being
unwell, and some cream which I guess is what resulted in the off-screen dog
attack.
Cutting
ahead a few years, Zak is giving a presentation on irony and how can
theoretically change people’s frequencies. Without proof that it works, it’s
worth assuming he doesn’t get it and he calls Theo for a “drinking session.”
Somehow Theo has Maria’s frequency analyser and through their tests of various
pills, they discover certain words cause a brief spike in frequency. OK, so their
luck is connected to sound frequency, of course it is… You know frequency can
measure stuff that isn’t sound, right?
They create
a program with some phonetic sounds that can aid your frequency in theory. Zak
tests it out by talking to Maria at her party and then again at the train
house. Maria ends the shaking by kissing Zak, sparking the beginning of a
beautiful friendship.
So, chapter
3 is about the relationship between Maria and Zak, and features a line of
dialogue so awfully funny I think I’ll just quote it now.
“Do you want
to come in and touch some more”
So creepy…
So, did you think what this movie was missing is more scenes of people talking?
NO! Well too bad, Zak opens Maria’s notebook and finds it full of ticks and
crosses, entirely meaningless as she never felt the need to write notes but
felt uncomfortable making eye contact with anyone. OK, but why ticks and
crosses though? You could’ve written literally anything in that notebook, it’s
not like anyone else was gonna read it
They take
the train to Maria’s family, and Zak explains in great detail the process that
he did to ‘alter his frequency’ her father is fascinated by his mother brands
him a monster because f*ck her. The father, don’t ask me his name, takes Zak
to meet a few friends at his lab, and they begin launching a product they call
‘the manual’
However
weirdly juxtaposed with this is a scene where it’s revealed that certain words
can precede a command essentially become mind control. WHAT? Why is this a
thing? Frequency was about luck, since when is this about mind control, what
has luck got to do with obedience? Why is this movie considered intelligent?
So, the
project is scrapped and Maria realises that certain words Zak said may have
caused her feelings for him, so she dumps him. Zak returns home and tries to
find his true love; but finds the only people compatible with him are old, live half way across the world or are dead, aka THEY’RE NOT F*CKING COMPATIBLE! Later, he is greeted by some
government agents who recruit him. The manual has cropped up before, but
they’ve managed to suppress it because of its mind control powers. They need to
come up with a way of doing so again.
In doing so,
one of them discovers several words that act as commands on their own right
because let’s pile on the stupid now. They continue to pile mathematical cr*p
on the whiteboard. Zak makes some actually decent suggestions but they’re
ultimately ignored. Maria tries to get Zak to order him not to love her, he
does so but nothing changes because consistency isn’t a thing now.
Because he’s
low frequency, I guess, one of the government agents finds Zak’s reports on
the irony particle and he’s prohibited from speaking. He begins writing some
sh*t then flashes back to various noises he heard through the movie, it’s just
as annoying as it sounds. Having worked it out, he uses one of the commands to
escape and heads to Theo’s old house. He finds the father and tells him he’s
worked it out, and you’re gonna love this. MOZART IS THE CURE! No, I’m bloody
serious!
Mozart
neutralises the command words. Though that doesn’t explain how it stopped
creating war after 1066, a bit before Mozart’s time. Speaking of, most of the
sound in this movie is terrible, eerie and off-putting only, which works if you’re
building up to something and aside from suitcases falling out of plane, it’s
just people talking.
So, the
final chapter of the story is about Theo, the best thing I can say about it is that it’s short. Theo has an exactly average frequency, he’s told his playing of
Mozart, though lyrically perfect, lacks any passion or flair, he argues that
such things are an illusion and we’re all robots or something. He begins coming
up with rules that dictate the entire universe, which is what he was doing when
Zak came around that time.
He tested
out his programme at the science fair, but his inaccuracies caused the b*tch
teacher to dismiss his work. Still he kept working at it, whilst providing
bullsh*t solutions to Zak for sh*ts and giggles I guess.
He tests out
his programme as he and his dad are at the train house at the same time as Zak
and Maria, he has Mozart play in the background or something. He tells his dad
that people are going to come to him for answers.
Apparently
for some reason you need to be prescribed music in this stupid as f*ck world,
but Theo is not done, as Zak and Maria enjoy their life of discussing whether
or not they'rr machines, Theo cracks the code to be able to predict the entire
planet. Was there a point to this? No? Oh well, the movie’s over.
An intellectual
and philosophical movie, huh? KISS MY ASS
This was
tough to review, and I’m sorry if I’m a little lighter on the gags than I
usually am, this movie was just so BORING with the plot being made up almost
entirely of dialogue. The plot is stupid in concept but something interesting
could’ve been done with it, but there’s no creativity here, and the grounded,
dark tone doesn’t help. I get that this probably had a minimal budget but that
just makes being creative all the more important.
The
characters aren’t deep, they’re quite one-note and some of their dialogue is
painful to listen to. It’s not intelligent, it spouts a lot of nonsense at you
and expects you to think it’s intelligent, in particular all the sh*t they
write on the whiteboard. I’d be more forgiving of this if it wasn’t played so
undeniably straight.
Your luck
isn’t predetermined, it changes all the time, don’t for a second believe the
idea behind this movie. Nor the pretentious message that listening to Mozart
sets you free.
THIS MOVIE
GIVES ME RAGE ISSUES!
Rating 340%
Note: The wikipedia article on the movie suggests frequencies in the movie are dedications of human worth rather than luck - this might actually make things worse! Thankfully it says luck on the back of the DVD so I won't be preparing a rant for that
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