Empathy, Inc. is a 2019 sci-fi thriller about an investor in a VR startup who discovers that the reality the company provides isn’t virtual.
If you’re at all familiar with small budget science fiction movies, you probably already know that they are a breeding ground for some truly innovative ideas that would never get big studio money simply because they aren’t easily accessible. That doesn’t mean they don’t make some waves. Think of 2004’s excellent Primer, for example. Either way, with more freedom to experiment, these movies can be a real source for some fun mind games, and that’s just what we get with director Yedidya Gorsetman‘s latest independent thinker Empathy, Inc., a challenging little film with more than a few tricks up its sleeve.
Young venture capitalist Joel (Zack Robidas) is having a very bad day. The company he’s put all his work into is going bust under a massive scandal that makes big news. With nowhere else to go, he and his struggling actor wife Jessica (Kathy Searle) move in with her parents. They aren’t all that supportive, so Joel gets desperate to find something new, lucrative, and fast. Fortunately, he meets an old friend named Nicolaus (Eric Berryman), who has a curious offer for anyone looking to invest. He and his partner Lester (Jay Klaitz) are developing a new kind of Virtual Reality that allows the user to experience the life of someone less fortunate. But what Joel thinks is just a simulation turns out to be something else entirely.
Shot in stark black & white with relatively few sets, Gorsetman treats his film like a kind of stage play with a Hitchcockian edge, the screenplay by Mark Leidner cleverly twisting the excitement of discovery into a chilling run of suspense. What’s more, the filmmakers are able to build greater and greater consequences out of it, leading to a few smart moments that come right out of left field. It certainly keeps you on your toes, but what it does better is never let the premise slip out from under foot, keeping the story local and about the characters rather than the technology that affects them.
Yes, you sort of have to swallow the pill in accepting it all, but once that’s done, this becomes a real guessing game. It’s rare when a film knows it creates a gap, leaving you believing it’s got nowhere to go, only for it to confidently bring it right ’round again. That’s this in a nutshell. At any moment, it feels like it could speed right off the rails but the production – and most especially the cast – go all in, driving this to a jarring and ultimately deeply traumatic end. It’s wickedly entertaining.
There’s a lot to consider when the credits roll, the final image (reflected from the very first) soaked in questions of morality, the more you think about it the more troubling it becomes. Empathy, Inc. is not without a message, its criticisms of society and technology worn on its sleeve, but where it gets more subtle is its relationships and the delicate, tenuous threads of the very word made in its title. This is a good movie.