Slater has a great job, a great girlfriend, and a great life until the Brand New-U corporation abducts his girlfriend and leaves an identical corpse of her in her place.  Slater is forced to become an Identical in hopes of finding his lost girlfriend.  Brand New-U is all about giving their clients better lives in different better places with the rule you can’t bring anything from your old life.  Slater violates that when he brings along a Polaroid of him and his lost girlfriend.  Brand New-U bullies him as he must navigate the various life upgrades in hope of finding her and himself.

 

IDENTICALS is a very intelligent and visual sci-fi movie from writer/ director Simon Pummell.  He draws influences from the myth of the doubles/ doppelgangers and Hitchcock films (Vertigo, Rear Window) while seeing it could be a cousin to the movies of Wong Kar Wai and Shane Carruth.  He plays with color and setting to represent different lives of Slater with the movie starting out as desaturated to being very vibrant and colorful by the end.  It has a blend of ideas and philosophy at its core (the question of identity and finding love against all odds) while you can see it is a movie about a girl and a gun or even a visual sci-fi love story.   A guy looking for something he once had and looking to reclaim it while forces in Brand New-U see it as backwards like something he can never have.  

 

SPECIAL FEATURES:

DISCUSSION WITH WRITER/ DIRECTOR SIMON PUMMELL as he discusses how he came up with the idea for the movie, talk about doubles/ doppelgangers, the story, and themes of IDENTITCALS in this very interesting 15 minute interview (but I wish he had also did an audio commentary for the movie).

VISUAL EFFECTS BREAKDOWN shows all of the digital effects work involved in various scenes

Previews for HYENA ROAD and EAST SIDE SUSHI

 

FINAL ANALYSIS:  IDENTICALS is one of the most visual and interesting sci-fi movies to hit DVD this year and hopefully it will gain cult status as a classic in the years to come.

 

This review is ©4-16-2016 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com