Otherlife (2017) Review

Otherlife is not a great film and that's a shame. It is a film with a plot of too great a scale for its own good and it misses the chance to make good of the material they had.

This film looks good and I'll give it that; it has some beautiful visuals and creative set choices including a rather horrifying and claustrophobic prison. There are also some clever visual effects such as the moments when characters go in and out of Otherlife and when Otherlife begins to fail. The acting in this film is also pretty good, and it's always nice to hear Australian accents. While there are some questionable performances, the leading lady Jessica De Gouw (The Rezort), who plays Ren, is convincing every step of the way as a troubled and obsessed individual whose goal is to save her brother. A very ambitious goal I may add.

But while this film's exterior is shiny and full of style, its interior feels shallow and dull. Otherlife, from director Ben C. Lucas (Wasted On The Young), follows Ren, a genius coder who's invented a "drug" that will allow you to experience a day doing anything you'd like in eight seconds of real time. However, her partner Sam (T.J Power, Eat Pray Love) wants to allow the user of Otherlife to experience a whole year or even more, something Ren is not too fond of. The plot then spirals into a fairly predictable farce including Ren being locked up in a prison for a year and then a few other reasonably guessable twists and turns. Otherlife doesn't feel like it lives up to its potential; I felt throughout the film that there could have been more to this somewhat original sci-fi thriller, and while I wasn't bored at any point, I could never shake off that Otherlife could have been more than a bland thriller.

And that's the thing; Otherlife isn't boring. In fact, at times it can be quite tense, the script constantly ensuring that the viewer has something to focus on and not drift off. You could watch it and have a good time, just like you could watch most sci-fi thrillers on Netflix and have a good time. I don't doubt you wouldn't be entertained, but you'll most likely forget about it afterwards, and Otherlife felt like it should have been memorable. At no point did I think the message behind Otherlife was terribly interesting, nor did I think that the plot device of the film was well used. Otherlife itself (the drug, not the film) is rarely used, and it feels like it should have been more like Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010) and use Otherlife to explore multiple realities, as opposed to the very few it sticks to. Oh well, maybe next time.

5/10