ORIGIN is an indie thriller that hails from Sweden. The story that plays out is very familiar but it's handled in a low key and realistic way here that makes it an interesting watch at times, although overall boredom wins out over interest. The film's science fiction elements are engaging but they're almost totally hidden from sight as the story progresses. The story is about a dying scientist who tries a new miracle cure that has the expected unexpected side effects. There's lots of mood and slow-burning mystery and the acting is okay, but aside from the climax there's no real drama. This is an example of a film which is too subtle for its own good.
4 Reviews
If you're a scientist, skip this if you don't want to cringe out of your skin.
sternumthebonegirl22 August 2021
As a molecular biologist, this movie was cringe-inducing to watch. None of the science made any sense at all whatsoever, and while usually I can suspend my disbelief, there were a few reasons that didn't work here. First off, the plot is very 'science'-heavy - a good portion of the dialog is nonsensical scientific buzzwords being thrown around, with little character development or sideplot to make up for this. Literally, the characters are one dimensional. There's angry man guy, bad scientist boss, one-note protagonist girl, and bisexual friend. There is the list of characters. The only reason this rating even provides one star is because of the chemistry between the female actors.
Most offensively, they clearly had the money/opportunity to film this in a real (and very nice) laboratory; would it have been that much more effort to ask a scientist to look over their script and tell them half of it is BS, and change it since literally it doesn't matter to the story line? Would it have been that much of a pain to replace their pseudoscience enzyme with CRISPR/Cas-9, a real technology that could feasibly have been used for what they were doing? Also, why is there a repeated insistance that your samples can't be deteriorated at neutral pH? I promise you, I have had that happen a million times. The science is full of holes that show how low-effort the script was; most of this is easily google-able information.
Also, don't get me started on the cringe-inducing bad scientific technique here. Don't try and convince me you aren't experiencing severe contamination when none of y'all are wearing gloves to do your work. Or that you're leaving your samples of ENZYME at ROOM TEMPERATURE and it proceeds to do anything for you after that. After this, I am not even surprised they used an unbalanced centrifuge. I'm more surprised that it didn't hurt one of the actors during filming or break the lab equipment to do any of that.
Want a good indie sci-fi flick that makes no sense, but is at least engaging? Go watch Primer instead.
Most offensively, they clearly had the money/opportunity to film this in a real (and very nice) laboratory; would it have been that much more effort to ask a scientist to look over their script and tell them half of it is BS, and change it since literally it doesn't matter to the story line? Would it have been that much of a pain to replace their pseudoscience enzyme with CRISPR/Cas-9, a real technology that could feasibly have been used for what they were doing? Also, why is there a repeated insistance that your samples can't be deteriorated at neutral pH? I promise you, I have had that happen a million times. The science is full of holes that show how low-effort the script was; most of this is easily google-able information.
Also, don't get me started on the cringe-inducing bad scientific technique here. Don't try and convince me you aren't experiencing severe contamination when none of y'all are wearing gloves to do your work. Or that you're leaving your samples of ENZYME at ROOM TEMPERATURE and it proceeds to do anything for you after that. After this, I am not even surprised they used an unbalanced centrifuge. I'm more surprised that it didn't hurt one of the actors during filming or break the lab equipment to do any of that.
Want a good indie sci-fi flick that makes no sense, but is at least engaging? Go watch Primer instead.
Mediocre "science student experiment" film
siderite27 June 2023
You've seen this before, many times. There are some very smart students working in a cutting edge field, held back by mindless processes or people who possess more arrogance than knowledge or intuition, deciding to do stuff on their own, usually prompted by a personal tragedy that gives the attempt legitimacy, which seems to work at first exceptionally well only then to backfire in terrible ways. Under the guise of a modern science fiction story, it's the same conservative fear that teaches everybody things should not change and there should always be control, just not yours. It's always the damn Icarus story retold ad nauseam for two millennia and the relatable group of young adults that somehow represent humanity as "imperfect heroes". No wonder we're all doomed.
I wonder, was it so controversial to just make the students want to steal the resources of the lab they are working in just because they have a wild idea that they feel like exploring? Was it so complicated to make them actually succeed and not fail spectacularly? Why can't we see them fail, then fail again, then succeed because they kept at it, like scientists do? Not the hollow cliché when they think they failed but in the morning they see that it had actually worked. Wouldn't it have been nice to see the global consequences of a brilliant discovery, something that both works magnificently and is wasted on a corrupt and decadent society? You can't ask that from a low budget Swedish film, but why the hell can't we see that?
Anyway, this is a low budget Swedish clone of similar American movies, themselves tired and uninspired retellings of the Icarus story.
I wonder, was it so controversial to just make the students want to steal the resources of the lab they are working in just because they have a wild idea that they feel like exploring? Was it so complicated to make them actually succeed and not fail spectacularly? Why can't we see them fail, then fail again, then succeed because they kept at it, like scientists do? Not the hollow cliché when they think they failed but in the morning they see that it had actually worked. Wouldn't it have been nice to see the global consequences of a brilliant discovery, something that both works magnificently and is wasted on a corrupt and decadent society? You can't ask that from a low budget Swedish film, but why the hell can't we see that?
Anyway, this is a low budget Swedish clone of similar American movies, themselves tired and uninspired retellings of the Icarus story.
What is wrong whit it
ppmr16 June 2019
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
