Blank

Rachel Shelley, do I need to say more? She is just amazing and makes a brilliant lead. The whole cast were fantastic, I could not fault one performance. I read somewhere that someone did not know how the head piece works, if you watch properly its explained in a clever way in the adverts on the TV. The whole set up of the film truly is great (spoiler) how it mirror images Claire's tragic childhood. If you haven't seen it you really should. The story and plot of this film is brilliant, all cast are brilliant, the images are amazing. This maybe a low budget film but the filmmakers really pulled out all the stops. I really don't understand the negative reviews, maybe they didn't understand. The complexities of the film.

Sometimes I wish I could detect brilliance, masterpieces and complexities and whatever superlatives they use to describe their experience (assuming its not marketing only) that easy like many reviewers do these days. Blank is not bad, the production is okay, the acting good, but the idea and the story itself is nothing really new or special. We watched this kind of movie many times before, if we are interested in that kind of movies (whatever artificial intelligence makes its own decisions and so on). If you read your good share of sci-fi stories or you watch sci-fi movies on a regular basis, this won't deliver any great surprises but the creative equivalent of a solid made cheeseburger - nothing more but nothing less.

This is Black Mirror meets Misery The Writer got writer's block and decided to book herself into an AI retreat which promised to deliver her next book. But it all went A-wire when there seem to be a system breech - a scary and stressful scenario. The plot is interesting and the actresses were great. Good thriller and you can really feel the stress of the main character, Clare. And the dummy Rita is really funny. The mother is ugly and really scary. The beginning is great and you get invested really quickly but then the dream and writing sequences became really dragging and boring. If the movie is edited to be 30% shorter, it wouldn't have been so dragging. I didn't understand if Clare completely stole her mother's work or not? Is this why she is having a mental blank? Maybe because she was never the writer?

This movie is what is sometimes referred to as a slow burn, which is a show/movie that has very little story and doesn't know how to add world building or character development material. So instead it's a string of long, boring, drawn out scenes. Characters walking across the set, cars driving down a road, characters staring, and long pauses in dialogue. They are essentially trying to turn a short story into a novel by adding pages and pages of pointless filler material. A story that unfolds slowly can work, but it requires interesting characters and an intriguing premise to make up for plodding along. That is not this movie. This movie is trying to be a metaphor for the writer feeling like there's a script trapped inside their word processor. I think this movie would have been better left inside.

There is one idea in the movie and it is stretched out for up to an hour too long. WE get it she can't get the door open. Oh no!!! Now lets keep hammering this same idea till the audience is sick of the sight of this movie. And where is tech support or some sort of manager of these units we're staying in? Ludicrous nonsense is what it is. The author writes the story of herself as a girl trapped in a house with her mother who is blind. Oh no, she's trapped in a house again, how dramatic this must be for her. We simply must keep watching this play out in parallel. It just goes on and on and on and on...

I spread it out over 2x nights, about 45 minutes a night. I'm not good with slow features. SPOILERS - After cruel, abandoned, blind, Mother dies, young daughter empties Mother's strong box, in it are manuscripts, rejected by publishers, that daughter then claims as her own work, long after the film's events. This is why she cannot write when her publishers want a book from her that they've presumably paid for ''they're spitting nails'' says her agent at the beginning. The earlier books, Mother's, were best sellers, that's why she got an advance, otherwise the publishers wouldn't be bothered if there were no advance cash paid, and they don't pay advances to newbies, not enough to get upset about. She's not a writer and never was. Well, now she is, through duress, ''everyone's got a story.'' The cruelty of her Mother is mirrored by the android and also her entrapment indoors. Locked in as a child and the same in the high tech house. Only Mother or Android have keys. The child abuse upset me and I think that was needless. Strangulation, slapping, constant belittlement. At the very end our heroine has her manuscript and leaves in her motor car, still working after 3 months parked up and a day's alarm going off to attract janitors (there are none) 8 weeks earlier. Contrary to other reviewers there are no loose ends, she leaves with the first book she, herself, has ever written. It was not until near the end that I realised our heroine was also the abused young girl, I thought it was just imagination. It was autobiography. A good film. I'm glad I watched it.

The premise is fair, but has been done. I suppose we've yet to see the man or woman vs machine theme carried out on a privileged white female simply trying to get in the frame of mind to write something. The theme is so played out...no originality or purpose other than the usual 'I'm being victimized' theme. The acting is fair, the setting is fair, the concept isn't bad. What is lousy is the lack of creativity or originality. The storyline: a writer, high income, indulges herself by partaking in a retreat that will stimulate her creativity. As her android help, and the system that runs her, and this Westword-like system, begin to malfunction, she becomes a victim of her surroundings. Where have I seen this concept? Anyway, it's drab, boring and without purpose. Nothing is inspiring about this movie.

This movie is what is sometimes referred to as a slow burn, which is a show/movie that has very little story and doesn't know how to add world building or character development material. So instead it's a string of long, boring, drawn out scenes. Characters walking across the set, cars driving down a road, characters staring, and long pauses in dialogue. They are essentially trying to turn a short story into a novel by adding pages and pages of pointless filler material. A story that unfolds slowly can work, but it requires interesting characters and an intriguing premise to make up for plodding along. That is not this movie. This movie is trying to be a metaphor for the writer feeling like there's a script trapped inside their word processor. I think this movie would have been better left inside.

I spread it out over 2x nights, about 45 minutes a night. I'm not good with slow features. SPOILERS - After cruel, abandoned, blind, Mother dies, young daughter empties Mother's strong box, in it are manuscripts, rejected by publishers, that daughter then claims as her own work, long after the film's events. This is why she cannot write when her publishers want a book from her that they've presumably paid for ''they're spitting nails'' says her agent at the beginning. The earlier books, Mother's, were best sellers, that's why she got an advance, otherwise the publishers wouldn't be bothered if there were no advance cash paid, and they don't pay advances to newbies, not enough to get upset about. She's not a writer and never was. Well, now she is, through duress, ''everyone's got a story.'' The cruelty of her Mother is mirrored by the android and also her entrapment indoors. Locked in as a child and the same in the high tech house. Only Mother or Android have keys. The child abuse upset me and I think that was needless. Strangulation, slapping, constant belittlement. At the very end our heroine has her manuscript and leaves in her motor car, still working after 3 months parked up and a day's alarm going off to attract janitors (there are none) 8 weeks earlier. Contrary to other reviewers there are no loose ends, she leaves with the first book she, herself, has ever written. It was not until near the end that I realised our heroine was also the abused young girl, I thought it was just imagination. It was autobiography. A good film. I'm glad I watched it.

There is one idea in the movie and it is stretched out for up to an hour too long. WE get it she can't get the door open. Oh no!!! Now lets keep hammering this same idea till the audience is sick of the sight of this movie. And where is tech support or some sort of manager of these units we're staying in? Ludicrous nonsense is what it is. The author writes the story of herself as a girl trapped in a house with her mother who is blind. Oh no, she's trapped in a house again, how dramatic this must be for her. We simply must keep watching this play out in parallel. It just goes on and on and on and on...