 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Transference (aka Transference: Escape the Dark) • Year: 2020 • Country: Canada • Director: Matthew Ninaber • Main cast: Melissa Joy Boerger, Jeremy Ninaber, Jehan Hashim, Ethan Mitchell • Runtime: 88 minutes • Production company: High Rise Studio, Never the Hero • TRAILER
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Transference (2020) was surely a good surprise to me. By reading the movie plot it already caught my attention. A young man must protect his twin-sister who possesses supernatural abilities and keep her safe from an unstoppable secret agent hunting them for an experiment in a classified government program. Mystery, science-fiction and unknown supernatural powers, good ingredients for a movie all dressed up with a very dark trailer to even catch more interest. But, although on paper Transference (2020) looked like an interesting movie, experience tells me no to have too high expectations because this wouldn’t be the first time a movie that seems promising ends up being tedious torture. So I was being cautious.
After the first instants of the movie, one can see Transference (2020) is aiming high. The filmmakers didn’t try to make a mundane film, but that can also be risky. Yet, I think they make good use of the tools and elements they have in hand to build a story that ends up being more solid that could at first look like. The visual ambient is dark and manages to create a perfect suffocating feeling along the whole running time, acting might not be the best witnessed ever but it’s more than efficient, and, overall, the soundtrack, my favorite aspect of the film, keeps your eyes glued to the screen thanks to the eerie score always developing in the key moments. Still, the plot and storytelling is the strongest bet in Transference (2020). The movie is full of plot twists, especially towards its end when it all gets perhaps too confusing. And most of those twists are not that predictable at all, so to me, it was a bunch of grateful surprises. At moments, it can seem to be too pretentious and swanky, but it is just the mood they decided to imprint on the whole film so that’s what you get.
Director and co-writer Matthew Ninaber presents in Transference (2020) several interesting questions, most of them in the terrains of science-fiction, so to be considered more fantasy elements than real-life facts, regarding what are the limits of the human mind, family boundaries, and the authority of a power we didn’t choose to have above us. It uses several plot pieces used in uncountable movies in the sub-genre but trying to avoid falling into the self-indulgence of cliches, dodging them smart enough for the audience to get related to those happenings but not falling into the same easy paths other titles follow. Because Transference (2020) tries to stand by itself, tries to avoid getting too recurring, and still manages to survive in the attempt.
Comparisons can be very negative, but at some points, it felt like watching very low-budget and not so talented Christopher Nolan and M. Night Shyamalan hybrid. The kinds of mysteries, darkness, and mind-fucks those A-class filmmakers made as their personal trademark, but in a very minimized form. I know, you might think I’m crazy, but that is the honest impression I got while watching Transference (2020). I know it’s not a movie for everybody, and perhaps with this text I’m creating too high expectations, but if you are open-minded and ready for the story to take you wherever it wants I think this title can bring some good dosage of entertainment. I honestly liked the story, it made me think and develop my own ideas even after the film was over. And that’s much more than what I get with most of the movies nowadays.
RATE: 6/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt7159566
