Horst_In_Translation Review of Hyperlight

Hyperlight (2018)

A mediocre sci-fi short that gains quality the longer it goes

[6/10 · 25 January 2019]

"Hyperlight" is a Canadian 18-minute live action short film from 2018, still a relatively new release and this one here was directed by Nguyen-Anh Nguyen and written by Nicolas Billon. Both are not new to the filmmaking business, but have not yet had their big breakthrough either. While this film probably is not it, it helps them taking the right path I think. The cast is really small, two people only plus one voice actress, but sometimes less is more and I think this is true for this movie as well. I must say I may be a bit biased as generally science fiction is (untypically for men) far from my favorite genre, rather near the other end of the scale. But this one here won me over. Well, somewhat. i am not enthusiastic or anything and I certainly found the firstg half, or maybe even the first 10 minutes pretty uninteresting, if not to say boring and Goossen alone could not carry the film for me. But when Shinkoda entered the picture, it got much more exciting to watch the relationship between these two and also wonder what is the story behind the man lying there in hibernation, or the story behind the character we only hear, even that got elevated through the group mentality. And the last couple minutes are a bit of a highlight delivering some solid emotion overall from several perspectives. You can keep asking yourself who is hero, who is villain, who is good, who is bad, but you will not find an objective answer thanks to the characters' shades I guess. Yeah maybe the really strong last couple minutes make you forget about a lot of the mediocrity and weaknesses early on, but still lets be generous here and give this film a positive recommendation and a thumbs-up. If you like sci-fi more than I do, then you should watch it I guess, but don't expect greatness, even if sets and costumes are pretty fine as well. All in all a good effort and I wonder if any of the people attached to this project will ever make it big. The talent seems there, at least to some extent.