Don’t you just hate the lucky high-functioning types? Healthy, young, fit and educated, with a warm family, a close circle of friends and even an office at work where they can hang up their degree. Then they turn out to have a serious chance of early Alzheimer’s. Ha! Take that and smoke it, fucker.
Such is the case for doctor and researcher Taylor Briggs who unwittingly stumbles across a psychoactive substance which appears to transfer the power of memory itself. Starring two actors you’ve never heard of and Dennis Hopper (best known as Frank “I’ll fuck anything that moves” Booth), the medical practioner falls into a wild conspiracy of murder, kidnapping and torture.
Mostly an inferior a crime thriller with little in the way of excitement or terror, Memory plods along at least at a fairly appreciative pace, tempting the viewer with somewhat workable if perhaps primative servings of secrets, and solving them in a generally standard and predictable way even though they weren’t particularly interesting in the first place.
The well crafted production is also a double-edged sword. With its firmly controlled lighting and meticulous set design, scenes are usually a little too inviting and friendly for their own good – even the nasty parts. This is okay for the thriller zone, not so much for horror, and neither for thrils. The smiles and winks while characters ruminate on comfy sofas as slow guitar plays; it’s all so damn comfortable.
What captures your interest almost immediately however are the surreal twists that the doctor encounters. Initially seeming to be tears in the fabric of reality, they later prove to be clues unto a wider mystery. Although their resolution is hardly captivating, their execution is rather surprising and definitely the highlights of the flick.
4/10
Possession Media 