Listening (2014) User Reviews

Character study with SciFi Trappings...

[stsinger · 6/10 · 12 September 2015]

"Listening" is a character study that is driven by a sci-fi plot line and is dragged down by unpleasant characters and some confusion. The story involves David and Ryan, two graduate students who are working on creating a device that allows mental telepathy. Instead of explaining this to their professor and working on this potentially historical invention as their thesis with the full backing of the university, they decide - for reasons never explained - to steal a bunch of equipment and hole up in the garage of David's house that he rents with his wife and daughter.

One day, Ryan brings over Jordan, a smoking hot girl he picked up who just also happens to be a brilliant scientific grad student as well. With her assistance, they make a huge breakthrough. However, the amount of time they spend working on the device causes problems with their personal lives and the invention itself has caught the eye of the CIA...

Make no mistake -- "Listening" is not a horror film, it's not really a sci-fi film, it's not really a "warning" film about "Would you want telepathy?" It is about David and Ryan, and everything else is just the conflict these two have to face. But this one fails because of that. The two characters are eminently unlikable, and they make incomprehensible choices and decisions at every single step. Huge questions are put forth and never answered. For example, Jordan has an ability that seems to violate every rule, and when she is asked about this incredibly valuable skill, she dismisses the question and it's never brought up again. It's never explained why the CIA would be so interested, since the covert government program seems to be something very different from what David and Ryan are doing.

The acting is solid, the directing and photography is clean and professional, but I just can't say I enjoyed it enough to recommend. Perhaps that's because I was drawn in by the marketing campaign promising a sci-fi extravaganza.

better than the rating suggests but not top tier

[ericnottelling · 7/10 · 11 September 2015]

Not a bad premise for a movie, and it's production value is pretty good. However it's not highly rated for a reason. Where this movie falls part is not so much in the concept per say, but in the expression of it. The script writing is not B rated, but it surely isn't driving the story. There are parts where you wonder, if it had better acting would the script have come off better. As it stands there are some parts where it seems amateurish both in the writing and the acting. There are some movies where bad actors can be uplifted by a good script (matrix) and rarely good actors can pump up a bad script (think Ray Harryhausen or any martial arts movie). This film is neither and they both seem to sink each other equally. As the writing degrades so goes the acting, as none of the actors were good enough to hold it up. Yet in the instances where the script is good the bad acting isn't so apparent. What makes the movie watchable is the concept. The concept of what they are trying to discuss and it's moral implications draw your interest. It helps set a frame work that at least makes the movie watchable. It would be interesting to know the total budget of this movie. It surely isn't block buster...but it also does not appear on the low end like a Primer. Although I think the movie would have been better suited to have more of a primer set up, disusing things cryptically and leaving in some mystery till you get into the movie. IF you like sci fi movies it's a decent sci fi watch on a boring night with nothing else to do. However, I wouldn't go dropping $7 on a ticket for it.

Almost great

[siderite · 6/10 · 16 January 2016]

The movie is written and directed by the same guy. That usually means that if it's going to be bad, it's going to be really bad. Good news: it's not bad. But it's not that great either.

The story follows two students researching brain communication. Of course the bad guys are interested in this and they are already in trouble as they have been using stolen lab equipment from their university. More than that, there are marital problems as well. This could have been a good idea if not for the paint-by-numbers story, which is obviously written by somebody who went to writing class, but didn't have the time to develop their own style.

The good part about the film is that the actors play well, the direction is reasonable - although I don't know why every damn frame has to have lens flares (another reason to hate J.J., probably) and the story is captivating. The only major problem is the lackluster script. Everything gets revealed way too soon and in the moments where tension was needed, story gets resolved by impossible means.

Bottom line: nothing in this film is great, but it had something, a potential that somehow failed to get realized. Good start, interesting second act, confusing third and a really really bad ending.

Cyberpunk at its best, with a few flaws in it. An interesting topic that will encourage some debates.

[peterp-450-298716 · 5/10 · 28 September 2015]

"You're trying to read the contents of an entire library by walking through the aisles. You gotta open the books to know what's really going on inside."

What if someone else could read your mind? Does that thought scare you off ? Or can you see some perspectives and opportunities in this technology? And how long would it take before a government would order their secret service to focus on it and obtain the required technology ? Before you know it, you're in the middle of a "Big Brother" situation. You're not only monitored visually, but also your personal thoughts are intercepted. Or worse, a certain dictatorial mindset is being penetrated into your consciousness. Every power-hungry nutcase starts drooling after seeing this method. That's the basic idea of "Listening". A technological innovation with far-reaching effects mixed with a personal crisis.

Ultimately, my general feeling about "Listening" is of a disappointed nature. The film had so much potential and opportunities, but because of some faint situations and a fairly implausible denouement, it's reduced to a laudable attempt. Let there be no doubt, the original idea is far from bad. A revolutionary development in the neurological sector, realistically portrayed with an abundance of technical equipment and commented upon in a complicated jargon. Although the latter tends to sound like outright gibberish sometimes. Could this technology be achieved in reality, this clearly would lead to the bankruptcy of the mobile telephony industry.

Most of the scenes take place in a messy garage. However, these are the most compelling fragments in this film. Also they used a remarkable wide range of colors. The various chapters are filmed in a different flashy color. This requires some adjustment and it started me worrying about the color scheme of my television. Every time a blue, red or yellow fragment appeared, I checked my settings. But in the end this gave the film its own personal touch. The disadvantage of a low-budget film is of course the low budget (how surprising) what leads to a limited use of stunning visual effects. This becomes abundantly clear with the stereoscopic images during a telepathic connection.

The only things remaining are the characters and the philosophy behind the story. The core idea behind the story is crucial in order to make a low-budget movie successful. If it doesn't look impressive, the story must be intriguing enough to make it interesting. As I said earlier, the idea was interesting enough and had plenty of material to provoke discussions. I can imagine that this will be debated widely.

Unfortunately, the whole is a bit weakened by the poor worked-out personal problems that David (Thomas Stroppel) and Ryan (Artie Ahr) are facing. There are also a few illogical things and there are some unfortunate developments. I thought it was a bit cheap that the first used telepathic thoughts were of an erotic nature. An attempt to substantiate the theory that a man is thinking about that, most of the time ? And the fact that an ancient Buddhist meditation method is able to withstand this high-tech magic, was a bit too easy. And safety precautions during the grand finale were a joke. But besides these tiny flaws, this was a not so unkind cyberpunk movie.

More reviews here : http://bit.ly/1KIdQMT

Great premise, but very lackluster in the delivery

[subxerogravity · 6/10 · 15 September 2015]

The movie reminds me a lot of Primer, but Listening tries to take it up one more level. While the concept in Primer seems mostly talk, this movie movies around with you a lot more.

A group of broke college students sacrifice everything for their experiment to harness the power of the mind. In a lot of ways the story works like the social network. Two kids who come up with a great idea, and everything is cool until they figure out they changed the world, and in that moment they change (Although the movie attempts to put morals behind the change) The philosophy of the movie is pretty cool, but at times feels like it's going all over the place which makes the movie seem longer than it really is. I actually love very low budget Hard Sci-Fi films like this one that fully draw the fiction from actual fact, but there are moments where the movie bites off more than it can chew, Ironically, not with the Science part, but with the social commentary about young genius who create something they loose control of.

I did love the story and the characters in the story, no matter what, everyone was likable and you want to root for them throughout, but I would wait to stream this online one a day when you have nothing better to do.

a lot of ideas going on without anything in between

[phenomynouss · 1/10 · 20 January 2018]

This was a very difficult film for me to initially get in to. Possibly due to the low-budget independent nature of it combined with the rather clumsy attempts at casual conversation and character building that takes up the entire first 10 minutes or so of the film. I don't know enough about these characters yet to care about the kind of conversations they have at the beginning, and the rather weak way its handled does not ingratiate me to them any quicker. The whole introductory portion could've been significantly edited down or else sharpened a bit.

For me, the low-budget indie style and the initial tone of the film reminded me a bit of "Primer", but the comparisons end there. Primer was very direct, sharply focused, and didn't care if you couldn't keep up with its extreme technical dialogue while not leaving you behind as it unfolds. This film doesn't know enough about the technical matters of its subject to leave you behind with.

Its initial introduction to the characters trying to create a means of "telepathy" seems to go over your head, until you realize there's almost nothing actually to it, technically. David types rapidly on the keyboard, Ryan fuses wires to a computer chip, then attaches it to his head, Jordan is there to be the token girl character, Melanie to be the cliché nagging wife, Lana to be the MacGuffin child whose sole purpose is being the object that motivates David. Typing is done, overly dramatic code is displayed, and people are overly concerned with the well-being of the subject guy even when nothing happens.

Once going past the introductory stage, we're abruptly introduced to some cliché sketchy generic CIA FBI Men in Black types with what looks to be the exact same type of device trying to put thoughts and ideas into people's minds and getting them to do pointlessly hideous things like get a guy to kill his dog for no reason because they're the bad guys and that's what bad guys do (thankfully, he doesn't kill the dog, but kills himself instead, as any reasonable person would).

These two plot elements very quickly come together so you're not left wondering too long what the hell you just saw and get worked up over the painfully cliché evil tone it sets, complete with blinding bright lights and one-way mirror with sinister roughneck government guy angrily complaining about progress being slow. The two main characters are brought before sinister roughneck government guy via Jordan who turns out to be working for the CIA and spying on them. Then they all start working together on some telepathy-based project with no clear or coherent content. There's literally no mention of what they are actually researching or trying to do. They all work in a lab where they've apparently already mastered telepathy perfectly; they can read each others thoughts and be needlessly paranoid around each other while a row of shaved-headed bald white men in black turtlenecks sit in a sinister little room perpetually lit red, spying on the workers with the workers fully aware of them and able to look at each other.

It's such an absurd, Kafkaesque setup that I, as a viewer, got needlessly angry at it. It made so little sense to have identically-dressed, identically-hairstyled people sitting in a room opposite a lab, in full view of the lab workers, just constantly monitoring them and staring them down whenever one of them makes eye contact.

Suddenly, David spies on the head lab doctor's notes, and finds... literally I don't even know what. We get quick shots at some sinister looking lab notes, the name "DARKBIRD II", a picture of a baby, and some other science-y buzz words and now David is set to bring down the entire operation they're working on. The one opportunity he has at explaining this is via a rapid, paranoid meeting with Ryan in a public place because their apartments are bugged because it would be a major plot twist if they weren't. His explanation is... I literally don't even know what. He rambles some incoherent thing about free will, the gubmint spying on people via telepathy, and gives some dumb examples of CIA being able to manipulate elections or turn random civilians into assassins using their magic macguffin telepathy. Somehow Ryan thinks this is all a good idea, implying it would mean no wars, no crimes, no violence, etcetera, and given how thinly explained the whole project was, you literally could believe either side of this and believe that the other side is completely wrong. You may as well have been told "This project is bad because people will be hurt" versus "This project is good because people won't be hurt" and it wouldn't have done anything more or less.

David gets into an incident with his estranged wife, then runs away to become a Buddhist monk, because he told Ryan earlier that he could try to deceive the CIA telepathy turtlenecks by thinking about one thing while doing another and that somehow only Buddhist monks are capable of doing this well enough for him to do it without detection. The montage consists solely of him getting his head shaved, some bland, generic meditation and lecturing from some Buddhist monk guy, then he leaves to go execute his plan.

His final plan is basically... kill everyone. He says the project is so dangerous, all of them basically need to die, so he turns on a two-way feed between everyone's telepathy in the lab, causing a feedback loop thing which somehow kills everyone's brains, making them all vegetables. Ryan manages to pull off his telepathy chip and confronts David afterwards yelling at him because he killed Jordan, then non-telepathy CIA agents come in and kill David after he kills Ryan with the feedback loop.

What did we learn from the movie? Virtually nothing. The whole telepathy idea the film runs with basically consists of hearing thoughts while the camera flickers back and forth between two still images of the people thinking, like a primitive imitation of 3D. For all the ideas the film offers in terms of telepathy, it's shocking how much literally nothing happens throughout so much of the film, with nothing behind the telepathy, nothing behind the CIA plot, nothing coherent or definite happening, everything relying upon vagaries and hand-waving to try to tell a boring, cliché story that ends up depending so much on the stuff that is hand-waved away

Good concept ... script, acting, and plot needed more work.

[Entheogenesis · 7/10 · 17 September 2020]

Long story short, this is a pretty compelling, although far from perfect film.

It'll be especially interesting for those who are into the kind of brain-computer interfacing tech at the core here ... that's probably going to eventually destroy or irrevocably alter humanity.

It is let down by some hammy dialogue, some inexplicable character decisions, characters we don't really like, a somewhat contrived and rushed plot, and a cutaway to a Cambodian Buddhist monastery which seems a little "accelerated" to be credible within the timeframe of the overall narrative arc.

Having said all that, it is original and fresh ... and there's otherwise some good stuff in there. At least it is not formulaic trash, like so much other derivative sci-fi out there these days.

I'd say most people, if they give it a chance, will find something of interest to enjoy in there.

IMDb Shills have finally found a way to fake 1000+ reviews

[greginess7878-1 · 2/10 · 22 August 2016]

I didn't think it was possible. Until I saw this film...I'd foolishly thought that I figured out a way to vet the fake reviews from IMDb. If you see a suspiciously high rating on an unknown film with unknown actors on a meagre budget, then the first thing I'd do is see the number of reviewers. If it was 300 or less, chances are that the reviews were artificially inflated by the actors' families, cast, crew, etc.... Well lo and behold......this may not have had a 9 rating, but high enough to pique my interest, and had more than 1,000 reviews. So I figured it was one of those "diamond in the rough" indie films which somehow slipped underneath my radar. How wrong I was!

You know how sometimes you can just tell a film is going to be horrible after just watching the first few minutes of it? Well this was no exception. Wooden acting, stilted dialogue, meandering plot... "but," I said to myself "the IMDb rating is decent, so I have to give it a try!". Famous last words. Watching more of this drivel did nothing more but to increase my irritation and headache.... honestly, what was the purpose of those color-filters anyhow...I felt that whilst watching some scenes, I was taking a colour-blindness test. It's the whole cinematographic affectation bit where the filmmakers randomly add filters in order to add a veneer of sophistication over what amounts to (at the end of the day) footage that is no grander than that taken by your nan during a holiday in Barcelona!

Full disclosure: I couldn't force myself to watch all of this film... once they started on the whole derivative x-files "the government is now chasing us" part of the plot, I had to give up. Perhaps I may have had more stamina if the acting was on par and the story a bit more interesting and cogent. But alas... t'was not to be.

So back to my original point...No way in Hades did this film legitimately get a 5.6 review out of almost 2,000 alleged voters. Just look at the evidence: there are only a handful of actual reviews on this post (and if you strip away the obvious shill reviews, I think there are only three or four genuine ones).

So I guess that this is what it's come to now.....some ingenious computer whizzes now have the ability to create inflated scores which are derived from supposedly 2000 voters when it's quite clear that not that many people have probably even seen the film! That really irks me........as I hate nothing more than people who waste my time. That is why, despite me being a member here for many years, this is probably my first or second review that I've posted. This is how strongly I feel about it, and just want to warn others who are looking for a genuine review!

Decent moral scifi

[andrewaragon · 6/10 · 27 August 2017]

Film is decent. Strong points are interesting concept, good pacing, and strong acting. Weak points include pretty bad dialogue and some key unbelievable plot points, weird choices in aesthetic.

The movie is worth it, but its not perfect. Constantly struck by how weird everything looks in the like yellow-green tint. Added nothing to the movie. The dialogue is also pretty unimpressive. Not a memorable or striking exchange in the movie because of the awkward word choice. However this is all made passable by the strong concept and moral questions that are brought into the scope of the film. It touches on the concept of sacrifice and freedom as we brave a new age where technology entangles with the human brain. A lot to take away as any good scifi should.

Below B-Movie Quality

[larrys3 · 2/10 · 13 August 2016]

Looks like I'm in the minority here, but I couldn't find much to like in this sci-fi flick that just tore credibility into shreds. Even below B- movie quality, in my opinion, the film focuses on 3 Caltech students who, through their experiments, find a way of injecting carbon nanotubes into the human body and brain, which allows one-way telepathic communication between two people, enabling one person to read the others thoughts.

Of course, a large government agency, namely the CIA, knows all about their experiments and wants to use them for their own nefarious purposes. There are some twists in the movie which are decent, but I couldn't find much else to like here.

All in all, this film,written and directed by first time filmmaker Khalil Sullins, may have some interesting concepts, but, for me, they were drowned out by the wooden dialogue and acting plus lots of non- believable plot elements.

Watch out for critics who lead you astray

[pgrieves · 9/10 · 9 November 2015]

I thought this was an interesting concept film - sure there are relationship breakdowns in it but these characters depicted are clever - they are not perfect. This film is simply about accessing Telepathy and what you might do if you could read or influence another persons thought processes and what happens when a g'meant gets hold of technology for controlling its citizens thinking. Listening is an interesting concept film. I say concept because you need to constantly watch out for the critics (rotten tomatoes) who review films - they give big scores to crap films like Spy and Turbo Kid and then hang crap on a concept film like this. I don't understand what exactly they hope to gain out of honoring stupid spoof films or comedy genital overloaded jokes films with there 8/10 score. They don't like concept films that's for sure!!.

Entertaining, not thought provoking

[captainblarg · 7/10 · 7 September 2017]

I would say this movie sits somewhere between 6 and 7 - it's a good job of entertainment, but a finicky viewer will find much to object to. I had to brace myself for the down-on-their-luck scenes, but those were balanced with the "meat" part of the tale well enough, for me. What was lackluster was their treatment of the ethical side of this matter, so look elsewhere if that's what interests you most.

I couldn't decide whether or not the movie was an attack on Buddhism. I felt an ironic tone to that entire side of the film, and that the credulous viewer is being taken on a not-so-genuine carnival ride, although if deliberate it's done in a subtle enough fashion to be innocuous. It's the filmmaker's business if he wanted to portray that kind of view. Although maybe they were just going with the whole mystique of eastern religion as a contrast to a decidedly western perspective, which could add to the effect of making the plot feel more wholly fleshed out.

Completely sucks

[Internet-Police · 1/10 · 6 March 2017]

Interesting idea but falls completely flat. I know, "Sucks" is pretty harsh but let me count the ways. 1. The Evil CIA/Government has hidden cameras all over the labs of these college students. When did this happen? how did they know there were working on this mind reading hardware? No explanation what so ever. 2. You are going to let an untrained college student inject your spine with a huge needle with nanotubes? Something completely untested by them on even lab animals. If you don't kill him you may paralyze him but that doesn't seem to worry them in the least. 3. Getting kicked out to the street but no one seems to mind. 4. Acting is so wooden I thought I was watching Pinocchio 5. Strange random lighting and lens coloring with no real reason...what the hell? 6. Computer blow up but are seen working 5 mins later... wow, that's cool. 7. Government testing mind control and give the target a gun with loaded bullets ... why not leave blanks? You would end up with the same results ... Come on how stupid.

Overall the movie sucks so bad the talent-less"director"/writer should give up now and do something else with his life and stop wasting everyone's time with this garbage.

Some really grating cinematography

[umimelectric · 1/10 · 13 January 2020]

Why would you film your movie like this? I just am dying to know. Scenes are either all blue, all yellow, or all green, and have moments of blinding glare that hurt the viewer's eyes. Why can't you just use natural colors? Also how about we hold the camera still? The colors and wobbly camera are both nausea inducing, and make the film look cheaper than it even is.

The characters are college guys with poorly written lines and they really ramp up their immaturity. They meet the female lead on campus, and the token obnoxious sidekick starts staring at her nonexistent rear (which we get a closeup of) and acting like a fool. I'm not meaning to insult the actress but it's just really absurd and forced the way the reaction about her body was written, when really there isn't much to notice about it. This comes a couple scenes after we're introduced to the lead character's wife, who is a joyless ball and chain who acts like she wants nothing to do with her husband anymore. What a rough break for any female who got a role in this movie- you can either play the cold "no fun zone" wife, or the obligatory sex object whose purpose is only to show skin and elevate the male characters. The "eye candy" character at least ends up being decently insightful with their experiment, a trait which is described in the movie as being "more than just a hot body."

I understand indie film-making isn't always on par with a more experienced crew with a larger budget, but there are some pretty obvious ways to not make your film so hard to look at, and maybe that's worth the extra effort. The premise is kind of cool, so maybe it could have been a decent book instead.

Very good.

[Delrvich · 7/10 · 8 September 2020]

But, gets very melodramatic in the last quarter. Somewhat unbelievable ending. But, still very good.

A Guidebook for the Up and Coming Sociopath

[macpet49-1 · 1/10 · 9 June 2016]

Two closet cases--one a true sociopath living with his sick granny and the other married with a beard wife and child--decide to make an internal Facebook/Mind Control in their pursuit of money and fame. Along the way, the obvious sociopath stabs his friend in the back several times to get there faster and symbolically consummate/end their relationship because he wants to try being straight. The other pal finds religion in the Far East trying to get over him but fails and comes back to nuke everybody. It's a new kind of gay Romeo/Juliet Frankenstein with a twist. The actors are true B-film actors and exhibit the style of acting one finds in high school productions and first year college types. Speaking of Hollywood, some old rich queen with connections must've financed this so he could do a Tab Hunter on the two main actors. It's not even cult material. It's just a yawn from one end to the other. I would watch it if you're trying to fall asleep. For gay people, it's an embarrassment. I thought they'd gotten over the closet/evildoer theme centuries ago, but I forget the younger gens are redoing the 1950s all over again and are on their way to sociopathy.

Terrifying script.

[juri-85119 · 3/10 · 5 November 2016]

Terrifyingly bad that is. The premise of the movie has potential, but the "science" portrayed is a little silly and illogical, even so within the logic of the movie. But hey, I was trained by a Buddhist monk to muster massive amounts of suspense of disbelief, even if the movie doesn't make sense according to it's own rules.

But no amount of meditation is going to cover up the huge problems with the script and editing. It's all over the place. Scenes are disjointed, and dialogue is as well. Sometimes dialogue is completely nonsensical, as are are some cuts and scenes. (The dialogue is so weird at times that two sentences uttered one after another did not have any coherence whatsoever)

Some scenes don't need to be there, and some scenes that aren't there should be there to make things flow better, or show a better development of motives and story. In other words; the movie takes too long showing us things that don't matter, and happily jumps over major plot developments, which are explained in a singe, short sentence or can be easily deduced, but it would have been much better to actually see those scenes instead of the ones that do nothing.

At other times scenes just seem to make sudden, weird turns. Characters switch motivation or emotions for seemingly little or no reason at all.

There are also massive plot holes. There is a glaring one that makes the entire movie pointless, but there are many. It starts out OK-ish, but gets worse as the movie progresses.

I had a couple of laugh out loud moments because the movie is unintentionally hilarious at times, especially in the second half of the movie.

The camera work is decent at times. They throw in some annoying lens flare effect in some scenes, as well as use different color filters for every scene. I tried to figure out if the lens flare and use of colors had any significance, but much like the editing and dialogue I couldn't make sense of it.

The sound is OK, music is generic, and so are the effects.

I had to force myself to finish this one. Two things kept me going; more potential unintentional hilarity, and the far fetched hope that the movie might ultimately make an interesting moral or philosophical point. Despite what some reviewers claim, it doesn't, it's just a jumbled mess.

Too boring...

[teodoramonika · 1/10 · 19 August 2021]

1/10.

I didn't like it. Too boring, the story was not interesting to me at all. He didn't pay attention to me and I even rewound a lot of times to get it over with as soon as possible. It was also a bit vague to me because of the scientific terms they used throughout the film and somehow the story and characters weren't elaborated enough. Ending is stupid and unrealistic.

A real 'Diamond in the Rough'.

[emberstonepierce · 8/10 · 16 October 2015]

This is an excellent film which tackles some very interesting moral questions in an understandable and entertaining way. It's rare to see such a strong narrative which holds your interest for the entire film. With surprisingly good production values and some great casting choices, this really is a 'Diamond in the Rough'. There are plenty of twists and turns in the plot, which deals with basic human freedoms and ethics - even though it can seem a little slow at the start. If you stick with this movie and give it a chance, you'll find yourself drawn into a world of secrets, espionage and brain-computer interfacing. If you enjoy films that pose interesting moral dilemmas and aren't just full of action, stunts and CGI effects, this title is one of the best I've seen in quite a while and I'd recommend it highly.

Not a good movie.

[jackbecker007 · 4/10 · 19 May 2017]

I think 4 out of 10 stars for this movie is generous but I'll admit it has a really fascinating concept. That was why I chose to watch it, was the premise. It just didn't deliver.

At no point are the three lead actors convincing in their roles. They are poorly written and don't even make sense. I never believed that any of these grad students could be remotely capable of the advanced science they were supposed to be doing. And the characters are not likable. I was never rooting for them to succeed in any manner.

Not to mention that this "sci-fi" movie was predictable and filled with every cliché and trope in the book.

It's not even worth this many words.

Great story, so-so acting and dialogue, poor technically

[jm_5 · 5/10 · 4 January 2018]

The sound and photography of this film detracted terribly from what is a great story. The acting and dialogue could be better too. The photography in general was too inconsistent. The color balance in particular was off-putting. The sunset yellow hue at times, reinforced by the low angled shadows of near dawn and dusk were effective. The awful yellow-green hue of their garage lab suffered the faults of film without a balancing filter, or color grading, with the annoying look of low light digital video. It is unclear how this was shot, but such a color temperature must be deliberate, in which case its terrible, or amateurishly unaddressed, which is unforgivable. The sound was equally uneven. However, I dare say the story was engaging and original. This film does not deserve the 1s and 10s it has gotten in other reviews. It is a solid 6 out of 10, as the majority of the reviews rate it. I rated it an extra star down for the technical deficiencies.

Could not get through this movie

[Hitchslapped · 3/10 · 13 January 2020]

There might be a decent scifi movie in there somewhere but I simply had to stop watching after about 20 minutes. The acting isn't bad but the dialogue is very poorly written with an odd pacing to conversations. It felt unnatural to watch the characters talk. On top of that the movie looks utterly ridiculous with 500 layers of yellow color grading slapped on top of it.

Bleh

[wandernn1-81-683274 · 3/10 · 28 March 2021]

The brothers were completely unlikable which made the rest of what was going on sort of a moot point. 3/10.

little middle-of-the-road science fiction movie

[myriamlenys · 5/10 · 18 October 2018]

Two highly intelligent students are conducting their own project on the powers and possibilities of the human mind. Broke and saddled with student debts, they provide themselves with the necessary equipment by stealing it from the university. They do not realize that they are under observation by a very dark, very secret offshoot of the CIA, which longs to weaponize their discoveries...

Yet another science-fiction movie in which the work of well-meaning (well, more or less well-meaning) scientists gets coveted or hijacked by an evil authority with dark ambitions. Within the genre, it's an honest but unremarkable entry. It would be a much better movie if it did more showing and less telling, especially with regard to that whole mind control/telepathy thing.

While we're at it, this is yet another movie in which white dudes travel all the way to Asia in order to become enlightened. (It is a well-known fact that one cannot achieve authentic insight while staying in Boston, Antwerp or Stockholm.) People interested in religious questions will be glad to discover that a slight familiarity with Buddhist meditation gives one near-total control over one's mental processes, which translates as "Matrix"-like powers of creation or destruction.

I may be over-sensitive, but I got the impression that the movie contained a "bros before hos" message or, perhaps, a dismissive distrust against women scientists which was not entirely flattering to the female sex. Well, who needs more women in science ? It's not as if the world was enriched by people like Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie or Barbara McClintock...

The war on people - the magicians other hand!

[krabat-0 · 9/10 · 20 October 2015]

An excellent script well performed.

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When you look at a street in almost any city in the western world today, you see cameras pointing towards the street to automatically and silently film people going about their regular business.

The way to protect yourself from this kind of information gathering is by hiding your face ALWAYS, when you are outside. Which would most likely garner you a more intense surveillance - possibly wiretapping and your house bugged and your friends bugged and you mail read and electronic activities monitored, all the way up to physical intervention, incarceration, "evidence planted", defamation - possibly elimination, if the watchers cant make you.

If you go on the net, there is no mechanism designed to cover your tracks and actions, which cannot be cracked - leaving your thought patterns, your needs, your funding, connections, friends, family etc wide open to blatant scrutiny or simple data gathering. Forget about VPN or Tor or what ever. One slip, and your IP is toast and not just your secrets are out, but everything your have ever shared digitally with anyone over the net.

Why is that? Because ever since 9/11 USA and all other countries (in order to be able to send and receive plane passengers from all over) have treated their citizens and citizens of most other nations as suspects - potential threats to cities, infrastructure, businesses, economic structures and institutions and their national citizens too, if not for humanitarian reasons then from an attempt to prevent widespread fear and out-of-control actions taken by more than gun-ready-and-willing men and women.

What if that lack of control over citizens could go away within a short while? What if USA, always seeking to be the bigger, the stronger, the wisest brother in the world, found a way to do that? What if the war on people was really patricide/matricide from blind greed, last rat gets the bigger loot?!

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This movie explores well know themes of surveillance and mind control in order to show that mainstream people only used to guns in the media don't realize surveillance and monitoring and pooling private information is really a weapon against a nation's citizens, not a protection from foreigners.

As an intellectual exercise this is kinda easy to both realize and sort of accept, but when you actually understand the implications of controlling powers being able to predict your actions and opinions and choices, it loses its intellectual shine as it verges towards actual loss of freedom - of mobility, speech, purchasing power, schooling, teaching, voting, housing, participating, giving aid and assistance etc.

Population control is becoming an increasingly difficult task, as shown by the recent Sicario (2015), where whole major cities can be besieged by criminal and violent "examples" and all "loyalty" goes to those, who can instill fear, rather than to those who protect.

While "Listening" may skip a bit on the realistic side, when it comes to calculating the consequences of thinking, feeling people falling pray to fascistic measures without relevant opposition - thus over-playing both spread and danger of a technological mind-control scheme - the script still manages to represent the eager greed with which possible control of people's patterns and actions is to be measured. (It IS lucky that everything living by electricity will die from lack of electricity or from magnetism. Making an EMP placed here and there hunky dory, if ever they tried anything similar in reality).

But don't take the movie as a literal statement. Take it as a pointer to the magician's other hand: What is everyone upholding power doing in their free time, that they do not want out in the open? What are they doing during working hours, that they don't want to share? See this film as an argument for full disclosure - as long as it is out of VOLITION. In an atmosphere of distrust, meaning: "You go first..."