 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Involution • Year: 2018 • Country: Russia, Germany • Director: Pavel Khvaleev • Main cast: Dennis Hurley, Ryan Masson, Alyona Konstantinova • Runtime: 84 minutes • Production company: Monomania Films • TRAILER |
The start point of Involution (2018) sounds by the paper quite promising. What would happen if us humans already reached the limit of our evolutionary possibilities and the process now got inverted? Therefore, we would start to involute, to have a regression back to our hominid origins, to be more of an animal than the suposed-to-be intelectual beings able to build machines, create sophisticated society structures and appreciate art. Well, I bet everybody might thing to know someone who is already in that inverse evolutionary process, but seriously…
The problem is this original idea gets wasted since the very begining of the movie due to the very lame script, untalented filmmaking and a poor choice of the actors. An aurea of amateurism is present along the whole film, which of course shouldn’t be a bad thing if some personality or movie making skills would be imprinted on the final result. But this is not the case. The developement of the happenings to the characters, in evolutionary terms, are not clear at all. And the setting up of chemically and psycologically treated patients to avoid some kind of undefined sickness is so badly depicted that one can’t get the real point of what is the reason of all things happening. Did I really miss something or this staging is very poorly developed? I don’t ask for every single detail, I can build my own scheme, but guys, give me something to grab on. The story is too erratic, it can’t work like this.
This film is the new work of Russian former DJ and music videos director Pavel Khvaleev after III: The Ritual (2015), one of the most boring and poor titles in the Netflix catalog. The acting in Involution (2018) remains devoid of personality or intensity, no matter how loud the actors yell and the deranged faces they make. His filming lacks all personality when is time to capture in images the Berlin near-futuristic society depicted in the movie. The action pace is errant and makes the audience unable to get attached neither with the characters or the happening of the story. It all very negative aspects of a story with a good potential if it was well developed.
Involution (2018) was part of the New Visions program at Sitges Film Festival. That’s kind of funny, because that original idea as inception becomes a very rutinary film, with no sense of experimentation at all, and with a very mechanical execution. Take it as how it should had been, and not of what it is.
RATE: 3/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5730248
