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DIRECTED BY: Antonio Tublen
FEATURING: Patrik Karlson, Izabella Jo Tschig, Per Löfberg, Ahnna Rasch
PLOT: An acoustical engineer discovers a technology to implant hypnotic suggestion and tests out his new-found skills on his neighbors.
COMMENTS: Fundamental to science fiction is not only its ability to predict the future, but to anticipate the otherwise unforeseen consequences that the future will bring. As Isaac Asimov noted, “It is easy to predict an automobile in 1880; it is very hard to predict a traffic problem.” So it goes with LFO, which starts with a tried-and-true premise—what if we could bend others to our will?—and then dives into the havoc that could be wreaked if someone with highly questionable morals wielded this ability. It could easily be a “Black Mirror” episode, but writer/director/composer Tublen has something more specific in mind. Beyond the dangers of trying to control other people’s minds, he’s interested in the kind of person who would be inclined to misuse this power.
It’s hardly accidental that the camera never leaves the tiny, cramped house of Robert, the quiet loner who immediately applies his discovery to manipulating the couple that just moved in across the street. While Robert’s ambitions might be large (he practices an anticipated Nobel Prize acceptance speech), he’s a very small man, and his home serves as a mirror for his chaotic mind. He is insular both by fate and by choice, choosing to interact only with those whose responses he can predict. A spiritual descendant of The Conversation’s Harry Caul, Robert is mystified and frightened by others’ emotional needs. Unlike Harry, though, Robert finds a way to interact with others on his own terms, which is how he can embark on a manipulative and even cruel path without an ounce of malevolence in his heart.
There’s an unsettling humor to how Robert pursues his research. We don’t know much about Linn and Simon, the new neighbors, and Robert doesn’t really care about them except for how he can use them (Linn as a mindless sex object, Simon to wash his windows and rob banks). When we do learn something about the couple’s personal life, Robert feeds that back through his own personal filter, inserting himself as an ersatz therapist and finding new ways to maneuver their lives for his benefit. There’s even an element of screwball comedy as more interlopers—a rival acoustician, a dogged investigator, even Robert’s ex-wife—show up to turn the screws and threaten the world he has made for himself, forcing him to use his mind-control tactics more widely and urgently. But Tublen never loses sight of the essential horror at the story’s foundation: people are having their freedom destroyed by someone only interested in himself.
Karlson expertly taps into the confident ignorance of Robert, who follows in the great tradition of cinematic nerds whose buttoned-up exterior conceals black motives. Even if he weren’t using his technological breakthrough to manipulate others for personal interest, we’d be wary of him. Wearing horn-rimmed glasses and short-sleeved dress shirts with neckties that invariably have a mustard stain somewhere on them, rocking a perpetual 10 o’clock shadow, and radiating an uncomfortable intensity, he’s off-putting before he’s even said a word. We’re not surprised to see his home in a state of disarray, nor are we taken aback by the dark, equipment-littered basement in which he squirrels himself away. He’s the Dangerous Nerd, the dark Dilbert scorned by society, whose intelligence will only be magnify his revenge.
LFO is a simple but smart little piece of sci-fi horror, a worthy companion piece to other low-budget successes like Coherence that pack a lot of ideas into a compact space. Even its whirlwind final minutes, when the global scope of Robert’s terrible ambition is revealed, it stays focused on his sadly isolated, blithely arrogant mind. The traffic was never the fault of the cars, but of the people driving them.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by WithoutTheA, who said “there was a fair amount going on that was strange throughout the entire movie. The ending was pretty bizarre too.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
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