#59 - Frequencies (OXV: The Manual)

Now, not many people have heard of this one but I F*CKING HATE THIS MOVIE SO MUCH! I also hate the kind of response on IMDb

“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