Infinity Chamber: A Revelatory Experience

In a world dominated by the deluge of Hollywood's attempt at social homogenization, it's always refreshing to step away from the ineptitude that the culture of the blockbuster has come to represent and find a film that's as smart as it is entertaining. That is to say, with less than a week before literally everyone you know starts asking if you've seen Infinity War like the good little sheeple that Hollywood, specifically Disney wants them to be, I feel like it's a great time to take a look at a different, and probably far superior film with the word infinity in the title. Submitted for your approval this week, this is Infinity Chamber.

The film opens with us staring at our main character, Frank, as he appears to be staring right back at us. There's some ominous music as we see two thugs approach him from behind. How do we know they're thugs? Because they're brandishing pistols. It's hard to tell the actual setting in the way that the shot is composed, but this is probably intentional as we'll see. The thugs train their weapons on Frank for a pretty long time, and then they shoot him. When he awakes, he's disoriented, confused, and in a small-ish room that is darkly lit, and starkly furnished. Seriously, there's a bed, and there's a chair, and that's all. Frank pokes around a bit before a security camera drops from the ceiling and over a PA speaker, a voice asks Frank his name. Frank begins a dialog with the camera as he tries to find out where he is and what he's done to be put there. Unfortunately, the camera is pretty useless, and only gives answers like, "I don't have access to that information."

The conversation turns a little more friendly, and a little less business as the two start to discuss their backgrounds. They talk about where they were born, where they grew up, and a few other mundane things. Through this dialog, Frank learns that camera guy is named Howard, and that Howard is a Life Support Officer, or LSO whose only mission for the time being is to keep Frank alive in his cell while he's processed, although Frank can't get a straight answer as to what type of facility he's being processed into. Howard is keen to point out that he can offer Frank soup in the flavors of chicken, beef, and vegetable, and can offer liquid drinks ranging from plain water to coffee. Howard also has a library of music that he's willing to share with Frank in order to more comfortably pass the time.

As a viewer, we know very little about Frank, and even less about the world in which he lives. We assume since it's a science fiction film that he lives in the future, but we get to be pretty much as lost as the main character. We are treated to a flashback that gives us just a little insight into Frank. We see him wake up in bed in what we assume is his place of residence. He gets some water for his dog. He does some stuff on a laptop and then takes a thumb drive. From this I guessed that we're not too far into the future because films that move to far ahead tend to employ some form of gimmicky looking future memory device. We see Frank ride the subway, and then we see him in a coffee shop. The details aren't all there, but a lovely barista named Gabby offers him several types of coffee before realizing that he was serious about plain black, and getting him that. There's a conversation about some pictures on the wall, Gabby uses some weird intuitive ability to guess Frank's name, then Frank admires the pictures again. At this point, two thugs bust in and shoot him in the back.

Frank is violently awoken from his memory, and finds himself, once again, in his cell. Now this is where it's going to seem thin. We go through this series of memories dozens of times. Every time, we either learn a little bit more about Frank, or we see details change a little bit. To the viewer, this can be a tiny bit frustrating because it feels like the story is going no where, and we're conditioned by inept film studios to believe that repetition in a film is lazy and not entertaining. I'm inclined to agree that repetition in a film without a purpose is lazy and not entertaining, but here, it's got a definite purpose behind it even if we as the viewer don't know what that purpose is yet. It's through this series of repetitive flashbacks that we learn about scanners that are in every place of business. These scanners identify customers, and that identity links to their banking information so that when the customer buys a thing, it's automatically paid for from their bank account. We also learn that the scanner in the coffee shop thought Frank was a totally different person.

Once Frank has this revelation, he attempts to get Howard to help him do something about it. Howard doesn't believe that the biometric technology could make such an egregious mistake at first, but when Howard looks at the transfer records for Frank, there are some suspicious inconsistencies that lead Howard to believe that Frank may be onto something. Unfortunately for Frank, the only way that Howard is able to get any attention from anyone who can do anything is to experience a hardware failure. Also unfortunately for Frank, if Howard is aware that Frank is going to try to do something that will damage the hardware, the cell has built in deterrent devices that will kick in. Frank gives up on that plan and starts to work on a new one with Howard just in time to hit the camera as hard as possible, thus breaking it. The camera goes dead and Frank is left alone.

He falls back into flashbacks as he waits to see the results of his meddling, but is abruptly pulled back to reality when alarms start going off, and explosion noises carry over the air. The already dark room goes even darker as emergency lighting kicks in, and Frank finds himself even more isolated. After a time, he hears banging coming from a wall. He looks through a vent to see a human face. The face belongs to a guy named Fletcher, and Fletcher claims to be the leader of a resistance group who is caught up in a revolution against the government, who they believe to be totalitarian and fascist. Fletcher and Frank carry on for a while, and during this segment, Fletcher tells Frank about a mysterious fan looking device installed on one wall of the cell. The device is designed to lead people into their memories and gently guide those people to specific memories that the government wants in a form of hypnotic interrogation. Fletcher says that the way to beat the device is to focus on an unrelated memory, and change a detail here or there to lead the device on a wild goose chase through the human mind.

The two create a pretty decent rapport with one another, but Frank hears Fletcher crying as after having dug for probably a long time, Fletcher runs into even more concrete surrounding his cell. At this point, with no power, there hasn't been any food, and not much water save for a slow drip from the ceiling. Fletcher loses composure, and we hear somewhat morbid sounds as Fletcher presumably ends his own life. Once again alone, Frank gives in to despair himself and retreats into his own mind, and the memory that he's been reliving for who knows how long. At the end, he gets shot again, and when he wakes up, everything about his cell is as it was before the explosions. Howard is back, and Frank inquires about Fletcher. Howard goes through the spiel that we heard at the beginning that this confirms Frank's suspicions from earlier in the film that Howard is an artificially intelligent computer who has been rebooted, and had its memory wiped. Frank has to start all over again building his rapport with Howard as he seeks to get more answers about his situation.

The positive in the situation, if one can be found, is that Frank starts taking much better care of himself... Sort of... He starts exercising and eating more, but the flip side is, he also starts spending more time inside his memory trying to piece together why he's been imprisoned. We see a pretty cool montage as he teaches himself to ballroom dance, do martial arts, and generally be a more well-rounded human being, all the while building a relationship with Gabby from the coffee shop. In his mind. It's a little creepy, but I suppose that if I were locked away in a cell without any real human interaction, I'd probably take some pretty drastic measures to try to hang on to my sanity as well. All of this leads up to, in his mind, Frank ambushing the thugs in the coffee shop in order to pump them for information as to why he's been interned. Of course, this is all in Frank's mind so the thugs are all but useless because Frank can't magically divine information that he never had to begin with.

In reality, Frank has also been planning an actual jail break, and he pulls the trigger on that as well. He sets off the alarm system after grabbing a pipe from his bathroom. The lights go down, the gas that the cell uses to subdue inmates goes off, but Frank has filtered his breathing holes. An automated robot comes out of a small opening in the wall below the device, and Frank shoves the pipe through the robot. He scurries through the opening, and as the robot attempts to follow, it catches the pipe on the opening to the space beyond. Frank moves quickly through squat crawlspaces before finding himself in a dark warehouse type of space. He finds a flashlight, and does some sneaking around, avoiding another  robot, before finding a ladder. He climbs the ladder, which leads to a hatch, which leads to a desert. It looks suspiciously like southern California, but that's cool. The desert is an unforgiving ecosystem, and as we're watching we figure Frank has a pretty well defined expiration date.

Frank takes to his exodus through the desert quickly as he races against time to find some way to survive. He ends up spending one night in a crawlspace of a wind power mill, and then the next day, he finally stumbles across a gas station. This is the one scene where we get out product placement because most gas stations come coupled with a convenience store. Frank skulks through this one, and finds the refrigerator where the water is kept. He grabs a bottle and begins to guzzle. He stops abruptly, a look of terror on his face as his reflection in the fridge door changes to a picturesque black and white photo of a stand of trees on the banks of a pond that looks... Suspiciously like the picture that he became infatuated with at the coffee shop. At that moment, the thugs show up, and shoot him in the back.

Frank wakes up, once again, in his cell, and supremely confused as he attempts to make sense of what happened. He spends a lot of time building his relationship with Gabby, mostly to escape the fact that Howard hasn't been able to give him anything to eat, or drink for a while. Also, Howard's voice shows signs that he's a piece of equipment on the brink of failure. Starvation, and dehydration push Frank to dejected and desperate measures as he tries to reason with Howard about letting him go. Frank finally comes clean as to why he's in the cell probably hoping that in doing so, Howard will finally release him, but it turns out that Frank is a computer programmer who wrote a virus that could cripple the government's digital infrastructure, and the government wanted to know the whereabouts of the flash drive that has the virus on it. Frank hid it behind the picture at the coffee shop, and that's why the coffee shop became such a significant portion of Frank's flashbacks. This revelation does nothing to persuade Howard to release Frank, and so Frank has to turn to breaking Howard using logical paradoxes. It does, however, come as a blow to the gut for the audience, at least it did for me. Here I had been rooting for someone whom I had thought was wrongfully accused, and it turns out that he knew why he was there the whole time! It's a fantastic twist, and it just builds more layers of mystery around the central plot.

Howard's one job is to keep Frank alive, but keeping Frank in the cell will inevitably kill him. Howard, like any robot with a program, has a difficult time understanding this. Frank persists finally using some cloth to tie a make shift noose around Howard's camera and hang himself. Howard is powerless to stop Frank and calls in the backup robot. It's at about this point when Frank's noose tears (we're led to believe that Frank engineered it this way), and Frank scurries out via the crawlspace again. He finds the flashlight, and pokes around a bit more this time. He finds an office where he finds out that Howard is an acronym to describe the type of equipment that Frank has been making friends with for forever. Frank and Howard have a poignant conversation about whether or not Frank can fix Howard, and Frank pulls the plug. He walks away and finds the ladder. He gets a bit emotional as he realizes that the ordeal is finally over, and then climbs the ladder. He finds himself in a snowy, mountainous terrain and he starts wandering. As he's wandering, he stumbles across a stand of trees on the shores of a frozen pond that look exactly like the picture! Fearing that he's still stuck in the interrogation, he falls to his knees.

Two hikers stumble across him and take him back  to safety. At this point we get some much deserved context to this whole thing. It turns out that the government had indeed become super corrupt, and that they were using 1984 level automated spying technology to keep the masses under their thumbs. They had several black site internment facilities like the one where Frank was held where they would conduct these trippy interrogations on enemies of the state. However, there was indeed a virus that wiped out the infrastructure, and over two hundred other detainees died in their cells. Frank was the only survivor as his Howard unit was the only unit to remain active in the fallout, drawing power from barely functioning wind turbines near the site. The previous government has been ousted, and the new world welcomes Frank as a hero. This is where we actually find out about the hiding place of the flash drive, and Frank keeps a promise to himself to find the barista and get to know her. It turns out though that Gabby is actually Madeline, who just wears whatever apron happens to be hanging around. Gabby had quit working at the coffee shops years before. The two have some moments together and become fast friends as they talk through the night. The camera pulls to a wider angle and we see them enjoying each other's company in the coffee shop. The camera keeps pulling and then refocuses to a shadowy image of Howard's camera hanging from the ceiling as the film cuts to credits.

And it's at that point that I got chills! Guys, this film is objectively, and hands down amazing! This movie is a perfect example of how limitations can lead to stronger art. While there's certainly nothing wrong with throwing all of the money at a project where no less that twenty five big name stars are acting like superheroes, giving people everything they want rarely results in great results. And why not? After all, they've already gotten everything that they want so why should they give anything more than what's required. I already know that I'm going to be in the infinitesimal minority here, but Infinity War is probably going to be a bloated mess weighed down by all of its big name stars and their collective egos, and the push to give each big character its moment. Even spreading that across two films won't do much to alleviate those problems. If this prediction comes true, just remember that you heard it first. That said, this is the world that we live in. Disney, and other studios make films with weak foundations, and think that the fix is to throw more money at them, which typically works out okay because China. That's why it's so refreshing to see that there are still smart movies being made. Don't get me wrong, if the MCU is your thing, you do you. I simply feel it's vindicating to see such a well done film that isn't relying on a budget that surpasses the GDP of a third world nation. I may sound a bit snobbish here, but it's films like Infinity Chamber that we as consumers should be supporting more, if anything, just to tell Hollywood that we want to see smarter, more carefully crafted movies.

I was unable to find actual numbers on Infinity War, but rumor has it that the cost of that film will be approaching 500 million dollars. By comparison, Infinity Chamber had a tiny budget so small that the director, Travis Milloy, had to build sets by himself in order to save money. What we get is a film with a spot on scope that realizes it needs to maintain scope because it can't afford to broaden it. We get a film with a tight script, good acting, and that invites the audience to play along. This is a thinking person's movie, and those are exceptionally rare in these days of tent pole blockbuster franchises that rely on popcorn films to carry them, and that tend to play things safe. This film takes a chance that audiences will stick with its fairly slow plot. It also takes a chance that audiences will forgive not knowing what's actually going on. Even by the end of the film, you as a member of the audience don't know whether Frank has found actual reality, or if he's still in the interrogation. It's a film that uses ambiguity to leave the audience confused and disoriented, but that teases enough along the way to keep them trying to figure things out. There have been a lot of complaints in other reviews that it runs too long, and I have to disagree. It's all of the flashback sequences that change slightly over time that give us insights into Frank as a character and help us to try along with him to guess why he's been locked up. Contrary to popular Hollywood belief, it's crucially important that an audience connects with a character on an emotional level in order for them to get invested in the narrative. If it doesn't happen, the whole movie is dragged down. Also, this connection and empathy for Frank sets up one of the twists at the end, and was necessary in order for the twist to carry the emotional weight that the director was going for.

This movie has not one, but three twists that would make Shyamalan blush, and it does one twist twice! That's a smartly written script. Milloy seems unconcerned with how flashy his movie is, or how much CGI he can afford, and more focused on telling a good story, and that definitely shows. I started watching this at about 11:30 pm, and I was enraptured the entire time. I never felt like it was too long, or that it dragged. Quite the opposite. I looked at how long was left wondering how the film was going to tie everything up so quickly, and expecting a let down ending. That let down never came. I was shocked by the ending, and appreciative of the sociopolitical commentary that the film was trying to offer, and as I said before, the ending literally gave me goosebumps. We live in a world where the likes of Christopher Nolan represent the high concept art of intellectual film, and I'd say if Travis Milloy represents the up and comers, Nolan had better step up his game. Infinity Chamber will not disappoint if you give it a watch. Well, if you like intellectual, thought provoking science fiction. If you prefer the popcorn blockbuster, then to each their own, but if you want a taste of what real effort can produce, take a look at this hidden gem. You can watch it on Netflix right now! And stay tuned to next week to see what we've got to examine then!