Peripheral (I) (2018) User Reviews

Made for someone, unknown who

[phenomynouss · 4/10 · 6 February 2021]

So the setup is pretty simple and rife for some manner of scifi/horror examinations or exploitations; a broke writer grudgingly accepts an AI editor to basically live-edit her newest work as she writes and her publisher will pay her bills and such so she can keep writing.

Over time, they keep sending more upgrades and additions to the AI, to the point where the AI begins to manipulate the story itself.

But none of that is important or really tangential to whatever this film was going for. Instead, the writer, Bobbi Johnson, goes on drug-fueled writing binges rife with laughable "techie-techno" style music and flashing lights while writing some absurdly over the top purple prose. What little of it we are shown is essentially meaningless word salad. The tone of the film and its alleged theme seem to indicate this was intentional.

Along the way, Bobbi is harassed by a stalker who sends her video tapes, a brother who keeps pestering her to hold onto drugs and guns, a deadline that is thrust in her face at the very top of the neon-light eyesore of a computer she has to work from, and the fact that she is inexplicably coughing up ink and her fingers, hands, and arms are slowly becoming coated black with ink.

All of this keeps escalating and culminating in a finale that, without spoiling, seems to make little to no sense either to someone outside of the writing and publishing world, or else like the incoherent, esoteric rantings and ravings of a high-minded writer complaining about the state of modern literature without really having any specific issue beyond buzzwords like "technology" and "truth" and "lies" and "fourth estate".

What message is trying to be said is in no way reflected by what the film is actually showing us. The rising issues of "fake news", propaganda, and expanding corporate media are in no way reflected by Bobbi becoming inky and presumably hallucinating a lot and computer tentacles.

If this scattershot assortment of imagery and themes was supposed to say something meaningful to someone, it clearly wasn't someone like me.

Hallucinatory cyberpunk absurdist fun nightmare thriller

[influxtwo · 5/10 · 18 September 2021]

I was quite intrigued by this bizarre and rather abstract piece of cinema. I enjoyed how it was written. I would have preferred more of a cyberpunk city setting to really sell it but I had fun watching it in a rather 'cant look away' curiosity. Reminded me a bit of 'Hardware' meets David Cronenberg meets David Lynch. Would I rewatch it? Probably not. But for a free one time watch as a cyberpunk fan it tickles a curiosity and has its merits, albeit nonsensical, absurdist, abstract or hallucinatory at times on purpose. Definitely better than your average cheaply written schlock. Would at least recommend!

Weird but not too weird

[Stevieboy666 · 5/10 · 28 July 2022]

Young London based writer Bobbi Johnson (Hannah Arterton) is so skint that she can't pay her bills. She likes to write old school by using a typewriter but her publisher convinces her to use a state of the art computer that features artificial intelligence, and so her nightmare begins. Quite an interesting story, very strange at times but thankfully I was able to stick with it and make sense of the ending. Very much in the vein of David Cronenberg and his movie Videodrome, with a splash of David Lynch. In one scene she is raped (?) by the computer, reminded me of Evil Dead but with wires and leads instead of tree branches and vines. The small cast all do a good time, nice to see Jenny Seagrove. Not a movie that I'd watch again but it isn't bad.

If The Asylum had to make an episode of Black Mirror - AVOID

[sevagc · 2/10 · 4 November 2018]

Other than the cast and some snippets of good music the whole film is junk. It didn't need to be feature length. The use of technology was way over the top, yet primitive in execution. Imagine using a see-through 50" TV with bright blue lights to write a novel in the dark....and use a touch screen keyboard with keys the size of chicken nuggets - which numpty approved that?

The story is about a young introverted author who had success with her first book. It caused some sort of "revolution". However for some reason she has no money to pay for electricity so agrees a deal with her publisher to write a second book if they pay her bills, the deal also comes with a few caveats...she must use their "hardware" to write the book, instead of her trusty typewriter. The hardware is boosted with AI to aid her writing and for thr publisher to keep tabs on her progress. There's also a side story with Rosie Day (interesting voice) who steals the scenes she's in, it's a shame that was part of the film was so small.

The VFX and CG was overused and over the top - there really was no need to go so sci-fi with the "hardware" and have a stupid webcam with red lights. It was like watching an episode of BBC Three's Snog, Marry, Avoid fused with Black Mirror, made by The Asylum.

No idea how this film was funded, although it didn't need much of a budget, they could have skipped the terrible VFX/UI work and given that cash to charity. The message they tried to drive home was hamfisted and pretentious drivle.

I feel bad for the cast as they did their parts well and will forever have this film on their resume... the story and execution of the film was just bad. Not an enjoyable film you'll ever tell anyone to watch, unless you hated them.

Videodrome Light

[betchaareoffendedeasily · 17 January 2021]

I don't think I would call this horror, although there is some horrible stuff here, it is more along the lines of a dark sci-fi, quasi dystopian thriller. It is a seriously flawed modern sideways take on "Videodrome", and reminds me a bit of the absurdly stupid "Await Further Instructions", it is better than that hackneyed piece of junk, though there are several similarities with that film. It certainly shares a lot of the flaws of "Videodrome", and unfortunately it has even more flaws. While the acting is very good in "Peripheral", the story is threadbare, and that is fine except we learn very little about this book that sparked youth riots, and I really feel that was an important thing to explore more. Take out the 5 minutes of useless sex scenes and go a bit into the history of that book, the most we get is that it was drug fueled and that she wrote it on an old typewriter, this just isn't enough to explain the fanatical response of one of her fans(whose response the Bobbi's book is pretty over the top). I really feel we needed to know what in her book made her feel this way? Even in "Videodrome", it's clear inspiration, we see what is causing the protagonist and his girlfriend to spiral into madness and more.

This is not a spoiler. Bobbi seems to be the by-product of a bad book deal, I think this is inferred in the subtext, she was a junky as well, so she very well may have squandered her money on drugs, I don't how see some people didn't get this from the film? Again, there were things here that do not merit more explanation. How many people have been the victims of bad contracts or wasted their earnings on partying and drugs? A LOT. This is absolutely inferred without a shadow of doubt throughout the dialog in the film, it just isn't explicitly said.

"Peripheral" has a very dark vision of the media and how it manipulates both the creators and the consumers. There is a lot of unexplained stuff here, though I don't actually think explaining a lot of those things would have benefit the film other than what was prior mentioned. What also would have benefit the film was cutting down the overly long sex scenes, seriously, there are two and they drag on into infinitum. There was genuinely no need for this, they went on for several minutes both and I found myself skipping them because they really had no need to be this long(I always skip sex scenes anyway if they are more than a few seconds and explicit at all). One of these is what is essentially a quasi technological date rape scene. I get the metaphor here, and that is fine, but it just dragged on and on, I kept skipping 10 seconds to see when it would end, and it seemed endless.

In the end, I thought it was an interesting movie though highly flawed movie. It is a bit obtuse, it doesn't explain much explicitly, by the end you really don't understand most of what is real and what wasn't, there are a ton of metaphors here, maybe too many. Though I suppose that was the point, and given the metaphors and surrealistic aspects, it would have been beneficial if the surreal aspects were pushed more to the forefront, and again, if we had more of an explanation of why her initial book was so influential. It is pretty explicitly stated why they want her to write more books by the end, and this again is an obvious commentary on how media manipulates and hurts people, and it shows this in quite explicit, yet metaphorical terms. This movie is actually better thought out than people are giving it credit for, but if you don't like strange movies and thinking a little and piecing things together, you will hate it.

Bizarrefest

[wandernn1-81-683274 · 5/10 · 8 January 2021]

This movie was quite the bizarre fest as a writer gets introduced to TECH that helps her write better. Haha.... I don't know quite how I feel about this one. So I'm going to give it a 5/10

Extra

[payasoingenioso · 5/10 · 9 March 2021]

If this lead character had a single friend or family member to contact, this movie could be palpable.

Reality seems like a foreign language in this art piece. The message is interesting, but it could have been executed much much much better. As an episode of the Twilight Zone.

Lacklustre feel

[Leofwine_draca · 2/10 · 2 March 2022]

Again, a truly disappointing cheapie that does nothing with the material and feels like it rips off bits and pieces of half a dozen other better thrillers. Hannah Arterton gives an utterly uninteresting turn as a self-interested writer - why should we care about her? - who gets involved with a weird online scenario. Random gratuitous sex, a bit of self-harm and lots of weirdness can't decide the paucity of the budget or general lacklustre feel.

A strange and interesting film

[LetsReviewThat26 · 5/10 · 3 April 2023]

Peripheral was a strange movie. Not just in its title which is equally odd but must have some meaning, but also by the events that happen in it. Hannah artenten plays bobbi. A writer that uses a typewriter for her stories. But one day because of her boss something weird turns up on her doorstep. A strange computer or ai that is very advenced and can help her write more and so bobbie can be productive. It bassically wants to brainwash her and weird things happen after that and it leads somehow to a pregnancy due to the computer and bobbie starts to turn into one herself almost. Overall this movie is weird but it is acted well and the story was interesting.

Weird and different!

[portmanrobson · 7/10 · 3 December 2018]

Really weird in a David Cronenberg meets Bernard Rose kind of way, this low budget Brit movie has its merits and is worth watching if only for its 'what the hell was that all about?' feeling you get at the end. Good cameo from Tom Conti who probably came in from a long lunch to do the scene.

Good concepts...lousy execution

[Nyssareen_77 · 4/10 · 8 January 2023]

This is yet another movie that really isn't as good as the writer intended and nowhere near as good as it could have been. So many writers these days have really, really good concepts and ideas to get across, but they get so caught up in being unique or Avant-garde that they end up making their work completely incomprehensible.

This movie had a great idea to convey how the lines between human creators and technology are being so blurred these days and how the corporate control of creative endeavors is destroying the creativity that should be inherent to the process. The beginning and ending of the movie did a good job of forwarding those ideas in an effective yet unique way. The problem was the entire middle half of the movie which made little to no sense even with drugs factored in!

Ever since the 1960s, there has been a growing number of writers, especially young writers, who have gotten the idea that leaving the audience with more questions about the movie when it is over than they had when it started is somehow a good thing. This. Is. A. Lie. You can have an excellent movie that leaves you with many questions, but if you are walking out of the theater or turning off the TV and are still wondering what in the hell the movie was about, the writer has done a BAD JOB OF WRITING! I know there are people who will be very opposed to my opinion, but the thing is, it is not just my opinion, it is the opinion of almost every person on this planet who is not trying to be a pretentious jerk by saying that people who don't "get it" are just not intelligent, deep, or special to understand.

Writers need to learn to write WHOLE stories, stories that have a beginning, a middle, and an end so that when the audience has finished the story, they can actually tell what it was about. Can writing schools please start teaching that again? Because I am really tired of watching movies with really great ideas that completely fail to come together because the writer never got past the idea stage, but still somehow made it into a movie.

It's certainly a ride!

[icocleric · 6/10 · 12 June 2022]

It's certainly a bizarre watch, and it wasn't what I was expecting when I sat down to watch it. Like the computer having sex with her whilst she still writes? Then her giving birth whilst she still continues to write? I was expecting it to have a "Black Mirror" but make it artsy message. Especially with her black fingers. But actually it reminds me of something closer to "Please Stand By".

I'm glad I gave it a shot, and watched it through to the end, because honestly I think the ending was really actually quite sweet, and I think something many people can relate too. When her actual works saves a super fan of hers, and the writer is happy that her work touches someone in the right way. That's really not how I was expecting that arch to go.

If I'm honest I don't think some of the weirder touches add, or take away from the film. I think overall whilst I personally enjoyed it, I think it's going to be an acquired taste.

No Walking on Sunshine in this one

[JayHysterio · 5/10 · 2 September 2022]

I was interested in this because of Hannah Arterton and it was odd to see her in such a grim movie after the upbeat Walking On Sunshine.

Overall it's a basic premise; human against out of control technology, the conflict reminded me somewhat of HAL 9000 in 2001 A Space Odyssey but without the filmmaking skill.

I guess there have been so many films of this genre that they need to make the story vague or convoluted in order to stand out, but all this one does is make the viewer ask 'why was this needed?' There are a lot of puzzling and unresolved scenes which is not necessarily a wrong thing but in this film the viewer doesn't get any background information or character development to have a chance to connect the dots.

I felt no sense of peril during the film nor a sense of triumph at the end. I pretty much didn't care.