OtherLife (2017)

Too much of everything

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

It is low budget, but very well made. Good screenplay, nice acting. The story is captivating, while the ideas that the movie explores can make you ponder life for a long time after you watched it.It is like a more sci-fi version of Inception that explores the ideas instead of making a show of them.I thoroughly like it, bar a few minor issues with the screenplay that make it hard to understand in what kind of reality the actions are taking or took place sometimes. Few of those connections I'm still missing even after re-watching parts of the movie.Solid 7.5/10. There is much more potential to explore with the plot, so I hope someone does a sequel with a deeper idea and bigger budget.

Overall, a good sci-fi and a neat world, but as other users pointed out, felt the ending was quite weak. Also, although the runtime is only about an hour and a half, it felt much, much longer (and like the movie should have ended 30 minutes before it actually does).Ultimately, Black Mirror has been there, done that, but better and more compellingly. Still glad we are getting more of these type of smaller-budget films with interesting premises. In a similar vein, I also watched ARQ, which I thought was a bit more fun to watch (although ARQ is also a premise we have seen many times, done better)

Watching this, I got a feeling it was from the makers of Black Mirror, but seeing it wasn't I was surprised they managed to capture the same feeling as the Black Mirror series. The story is set in the near future when biotechnology is further along and can produce memories from drugs, creating a false memory in just a few seconds of days-long vacations and other sorts.If you like Black Mirror, this is recommended. If you like this and haven't seen Black Mirror, you should watch it. If you don't like Black Mirror, this might be slow to watch. As with the Black Mirror episodes, it also gives you alot to think about, and a deeper meaning to it rather than just another movie.

The beautiful Ren (is that supposed to be a name?) works at some company where she developed a "software" in liquid form that when put into a person's eye allows him to experience something for several hours or so, an experience that in real life only takes place during a minute or so. The company and it's product are called OtherLife because the plan is to offer people to experience their dreams. But financially the company isn't doing well, just as the release of the product will be in 5 days. Ren has a brother in a coma and she's "treating" him with the eye drops hoping we will snap out of it somehow by making him relive the same day of the accident over and over. At some point his eye twitches. Her father though is ready to pull the plug on the brother. One day, Ren's patient boyfriend finally gets to spend some time with her. She gives him an eye drop where he experiences some snowboarding. He grabs another vial hoping to relive the experience but instead grabs a vial meant for Ren's brother so this guy ends up dead. That allows Ren's partner Sam to get some investment from a jail company. The idea is to put people away in virtual OtherLife jails for years when in reality they are only "in jail" for a minute. And Ren is the first one to undergo this virtual conviction. She's sentenced to a year. Her cell has a wall made up of LEDs showing the day number. When 365 hits, Ren is ready to get out, but the counter tuns again to "1." Ren, desperate, manages to escape, only to find out she hasn't been in the lab but in some actual single cell room out somewhere. She escape the security people and meets up with a friend. She ends up making some interesting discoveries and will have to find a way to return OtherLife to its original purpose of improving people's lives.OtherLife features the lovely Jessica De Gouw and has an intriguing premise that it manages to work out more or less satisfyingly. The whole jail bit didn't really fit into and wasn't suited for the movie. But as many sci-fi movies of late, it offers so much more than the usual tired old storylines of other genres.