If you watch this film thinking it's the one based on Half-Life the game, you will naturally be disappointed. There again, you will probably be disappointed anyway. The film starts with the familiar trope of people going about their everyday lives while the radio and TV give us hints of Impending Doom. "Oh, goody," you think, "civilization is going to collapse any minute now." Here's the spoiler: civilization doesn't collapse. This film has no plagues, zombies or mutant biker gangs. Instead we have a guy who's dating a woman and fancies her daughter plus a coming-out drama. Oh yes, and there's a kid who has mutant powers or may possibly be the Messiah. Or Damien, I'm not sure. We never find out, because he hardly ever uses his powers, and it's a case of "Blink and you've missed it." As far as I can tell, there is no reason why the kid should have these powers, and it doesn't tie in to the impending doom back-story. It's like someone wrote a run-of-the-mill family drama then thought, "Oh my, this is dull, let's put in a kid with mutant powers. And maybe have the world end."

This is pretentious faux deep nonsense. It was designed so that pretentious faux deep pseudo intellectuals could watch it, then sit around, smoke cigarettes, and say pretentious faux deep things. The things they say will be gibberish, but they and their pretentious faux deep friends can pretend that they have meaning so that they feel sophisticated. Many of us knew them in college. I think a Saturday Night Live skit was made about these sorts of people featuring Catherine Zeta-Jones, but I can't recall the exact episode. I heard that this was intelligent science fiction. It wasn't. It had a pinch of vague stereotypical psi phenomena so that it could jump genres, but the psi had nothing to do with the plot. I waded through the whole thing hoping that there would eventually be some point. There wasn't. It was just the same old annoying and sometimes creepy sexual tension and promiscuity mixed with a lot of emoting and confusion. I would give this movie one star, but that would be unfair since the acting was reasonably good. It's not the actors' fault they got dragged into this thing. They probably needed the work. The actors deserve some small concession.

It was better than I expected from the trailer -- I was recommended by a friend who saw it at a film festival, and I found the themes resonating with the turmoil in many lives around me. Haunting and beautiful, eerie and prescient. The performances by the younger actors (Sanoe Lake and Alexander Agate) were inspiring and charged with the right level of emotional inflection to make their characters seem real. There was a really strong supporting cast, with quirky moments that were darkly funny. The animation, for an independent film, was creative and invoked the alternate reality quite well. I would definitely recommend the film, and it was great to see a new emerging female director premiere at Sundance!

Probably the best film I saw this year at Sundance. The film is amazingly well crafted and profound. The type of film that you expect to see at Sundance. The film revolves around a family falling apart, personal identity, sexual identity, and religion, without being preachy. There are a number of very creative animated sequences, shot with the confidence of a real art film, the pace of the film is a welcome relief in our MTV quick cut era and had the best music of any film I saw at the festival (why do so many Sundance films have uninspired or just bad music) If your a fan of real art and cinema, this is the film for you!