For years, we have tried to harness the power of the human mind... and failed. Now, one breakthrough will change everything. Beyond technology. Beyond humanity. Beyond control. This is a psychological thriller about penniless grad students who invent mind-reading technology that destroys their lives.
It looks and feels like a particularly well made student film (so many colored filters), but the subject matter is rather more interesting and weirdly plausible than the recent spate of big-budget AI films.
Meditation as a countermeasure against a sinister mind-control conspiracy is a novel idea; too bad it's wedged into a rickety framework of numbingly conventional dramatic complications, half-hearted eroticism, and pervasive humorlessness.
Too bad Sullins doesn't have a movie's worth of story out of this premise. Rather than pioneering into the frontiers of the mind, Listening slogs through the most well-traveled pits of screenwriting.
... Listening displays courage: in embracing bold stylization and colors in an age of washed-out, gritty sci-fi; in not retreating from the more horrific aspects of the involved science...
Director/screenwriter Khalil Sullins makes an auspicious feature debut with his audacious sci-fi thriller that's as engrossing as it is thought-provoking.
