Lapsis (2020)

Low-budget science fiction can be very tricky to pull off successfully. How do you believably world-build with the financial and time constraints common to indie productions? Lapsis embraces these limitations, a quirky social commentary that still serves up and explores some very big ideas.

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I was not previously familiar with documentarian Noah Hutton, but in this, his feature film debut, he wrote, directed, edited, and even composed the memorable score. This dark and droll social satire skewers our current gig economy from its troubling alternate universe with unnerving precision.

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The story centers on Ray (a fantastic Dean Imperial) looking and sounding like a cross between Ryan Reynolds and James Gandolfini, who is forced to take a job "cabling" for the quantum computing monopoly to support his ailing half-brother. The job is basic enough. You hike through the woods stringing cable between huge, metal quantum cubes while competing with other cablers and automatic cabling robots for your routes. A character-driven approach lets the story unfold naturally, through narrative dialogue and fantastic acting. Why is this job, not all it is promised to be, and what is up with Ray's problematic "trail name"?

The film never looks cheap, as Hutton uses the budget admirably, from the adorable but dastardly robots that were fully functional (RHex robots designed by Penn Engineering students) and the beautiful cinematography in the woodland settings. The cheapest thing in this movie may be the ending. The ending left me cold at first. I thought about it for several days (this is the type of movie you will think about later) and I eventually understood his point. This film explores corporate greed, the exploitation of workers, and income inequality. When the upper-middle-class characters deny Ray a cell phone charge while allowing the robots to dock there, it becomes a parable about the rise of technology in the workplace and how that will affect the average worker. Lapsis, skewering our imbalanced wealth system and the increasing threat of automation in the workplace, paints a bleak picture of one possible future, while still embracing the human ability to adapt and organize to improve our lot. It is a very different movie, not for everyone, but definitely worth a look, and I am interested to see what Hutton does next.

Patricia Pirillo