ANTI MATTER Traileer & Film Review.
Director: Keir Burrows
Genre: Mystery, Sci-Fi
ANTI MATTER is a lean-budgeted thriller which skirts the line of human drama and speculative sci-fi in the tradition of Primer, and Safety Not Guaranteed. The story follows a group of Oxford research students, who build a device and turn it on, without first fully understanding its repercussions. One of the three, Ana, finds herself without memory of the experiment, and begins to question the increasingly shifting motives of her two colleagues.
Keir Burrows’s debut feature (which he wrote and directed), tells an interesting and compelling story which manages the trick of keeping us involved (and intrigued), even as Ana (Yaiza Figueroa) loses focus on her own life and existence, in her increasingly desperate attempts to discover what actually happened. Burrows weaves multiple strands together: among them campus life, an ongoing animal rights protest (with sinister overtones), as well as Ana’s conversations with her mother, who is herself in the process of transition from old life to new, through the device of moving house.
This is where ANTI MATTER avoids the cliche of using multiple red herrings and recurring motifs to suggest the character’s fragmented reality state, instead everything that goes on around Ana feels like a genuine extension of her campus existence, including touches of wit (such as when the government agent offers her a peanut), and inventive use of visuals (one very well filmed chase sequence).
The ending is not altogether a surprise, and the story might have used tightening up here and there, but ANTI MATTER is never less than engaging and interesting, and unlike Primer, it puts its well written protagonists front an centre in a way that makes you want to follow them down this particular scientific rabbit hole.
ANTI MATTER is an excellent British indie effort which promises more good things from all involved.
View ANTI MATTER on Amazon prime.
Ivo Bochenski
