Flashout is a sci-fi film about a parallel universe, where three young women play the blind date reality game InterMate in order to experience the euphoria of the FLASHOUT.
Ecstasy without sex has popped up in movies before in films like Woody Allen‘s Sleeper and Sylvester Stallone‘s Demolition Man and naturally, play it for a laugh. In writer/director Richard Lerner‘s new independent sci-fi film Flashout, comedy is certainly on tap as sex plays a key role in the goings on, even if the word is never actually used. Sort of a silly commentary on the human experience, a common theme on aliens visiting Earth who aren’t trying to invade it, this twisty adventure is a light comedy dressed up in academic level science that might suffer from a lack of polish but is nonetheless pretty entertaining.
If you’re not familiar with the multiverse theory, it’s meaning is basically in the name, that we live in one of many universes all linked into everything that exists, including time, space, matter, and more. It’s also the setting for where young and beautiful Dessa (Lorynn York) lives and works, she an actress like any getting started, looking for a break. Her agent gets her a gig as the spokesperson for a reality game called InterMate, a simulated collapsing world where you must figure out who is real and who is not, reaching a ‘flashout’ where you get a kind of orgasmic rush without actually, you know, doing it. Problem is, when she goes into the game with two friends, Iastar (Maya Stojan) and Lleva (Malea Rose), they end up on the very real Earth, accidently having found a twist in the time/space continuum. Now everything is a mess and in comes a Repairman (Jonathan Goldstein) to set things right.
Exponentially weird, Flashout is an odd film with dialogue heavily loaded with terms and phrases you might only hear at an astrophysics conference (or maybe in the parking lot after an early Grateful Dead concert), all centered around three young girls stuck on Earth working for an escort service. Even as purposefully hyper-intellectual as the words may be, the film is still mostly accessible as it follows the young women as they experience the party scene and become locally sought after for their ‘flashout’ powers, all the while as the Repairman tries to intervene and break the damage they are causing (or is he?). It’s not hard to keep up is what I’m saying.
Full of low budget CGI that seems purposefully meant to be, as if cheesy special effects are the point, this is not to be taken seriously. The cast is clearly having a good time, surely knowing what they’re into, putting together a light and breezy 90 minutes intended to earn a few laughs and guffaws. It’s entirely harmless and honestly, even if it is trying to poke a few jabs at what it means to be human, gets by on its earnest charms enough to win points for the effort.