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After directing two short films, THE GIRL IN THE WOODS and QUANTUM REQUIEM, and completing a documentary called THE UNBELIEVERS, Gus Holwerda has finally made the leap into feature films with INTERSECT (WATCH IT HERE / OWN IT HERE), a sluggishly drawn-out and disjointed attempt at time travel. Predictably, they ended up with this disjointed mess that does have a hint of amateurishness to it. With unpersuasive CGI and non-chronological storytelling that poses far more problems than it does solutions, the movie ultimately falls flat on its face and fails to answer anything novel in regard to the subgenre. Nor does it send shivers down one’s spine like it should while recycling the imagery and themes from far better movies. An attempt at feeling intellectually stimulating, the movie quite clearly missed the mark and instead feels like a midseason Flash episode mixed with the Outer Limits. So unless you’re a hopeless sadomasochist that is in dire need of a migraine, I highly advise that you stay far away from INTERSECT when it releases on VOD September 15, 2020.
The film begins with a montage of strange alien activities that promise something, but in the end, they fail to actually come through. The next 15 minutes can be hastily cut as a series of disorienting and ghastly performed tasks in a school lab do nothing but make the viewer lose interest. There is a fragmented story in the film where a viewer is put in this scenario with the intention of disorienting them and making the viewer more interested. However, this movie is just too long and tedious to go through it all. Eventually, we are introduced to the three main characters, Ryan (Jason Spisak), Nate (Abe Ruthless), and Caitlin (Leeann Dearing) who are scientists in Miskatonic University, one of this fictional school set in the fake land of Arkham, Massachusetts. The following 45 minutes are spent in a complete daze as the characters try to explain that some of the world’s physicists have invented a time-traveling machine called Quantum 42 (Q42) an English physicist whose name is far too similar to Stardate’s archway. Several mice are subjected to extreme doses of the proper modulation and then liquefied before proving successful.
Because the movie centers around time travel, the plot is presented in a disjointed way. Even though Caitlin seems much more attracted to Ryan, we learn an hour into the film that she is actually in a relationship with a drunken, attitudinal goofball named Nate. Nate believes it is a great idea to have a few cocktails and attempt to be the first human to time travel. The results are laughably predictable and in no way scary as poorly rendered CGI fills the screen. From here, the film flashes backward and spends an outrageous amount of time with the three leads as high school students. The movie then stumbles into a half-hearted critique of school bullying with Ryan, Caitlin, and Nate studying quantum physics with their teacher Mr. Marshall (James Morrison). Eventually, this overly long center section turns into a weeping melodramatic snooze fest complete with sad middle-of-the-night confessionals that condemn sentimentality and any interest the film has to offer.
When it comes to praise, I can say that the film does get better during the last thirty minutes, but I can’t be sure that your attention span allows you to get that far. Either way, if it does, the characters still seem too cold and distant for anyone to care about the outcome. Not to mention, the cheap SyFy-level CGI rears its ugly head over the final reel which, while more action-heavy and entertaining, is still less convincing than the hints we’re shown of the time traveling monsters earlier. I usually give a lot of leeway with first-time directors where resources are scarce, and it is clear this is a low-budget indie affair. To put it simply, Holwerda has bitten off more than he can chew as this will be his first feature directing experience, and has delivered an unnecessarily complicated two-hour film with roughly forty-five minutes of an actual plot. Non-linear time travel films are tough for even the most skilled directorial craftsmen so in that sense, it seems like Holwerda was a little too ambitious for his first feature.
In summary, INTERSECT takes way too long to reach its destination, doing very little with the minimal suspense and interest the film has to offer. Additionally, the film makes many rookie errors attributed to a first-time filmmaker. There are attempts for it to be a time-bending mystery sci-fi/horror film like H.G. Wells and H.P. Lovecraft, and simultaneously, it wants to be an anti-bully lecture, anti-religious rant, and even worse, a subpar soap opera. These scenes, all smashed together in one film, create chaos. The forgettable performances and overall low production value of the low budget film don’t contribute to solving the problem. I’m curious to find out what Holwerda has written next, however, if he does choose to direct again, I hope he does it more carefully.
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