D’you ever think about what the world was like before you were born? How people accomplished things without computers, or telephones? Lapsis puts us in this thoughtful mindset—while maintaining a compelling story. It blends old-school thriller with new-school looks, and the result is a slow-burn, down-to-earth sci-fi that you don’t want to miss.
Its world is very much like ours. Tech companies monopolize profits while traffic cops sneak tickets onto your car. New Yorkers speak with unmistakably New York-accents. The only difference is, the computers are quantum.
Don’t worry, you don’t need to know what that means. Ray, our lead, certainly doesn’t. He won’t risk bringing untested tech home while his grown but sickly step-brother still struggles to get through each day. What the family needs is a cure, not faster internet.
It’s a fair point. But for Ray, it’s a losing one. This charmingly polite, rough around the edges everyman—played wonderfully by Dean Imperial—can’t pay the bills with his odd jobs anymore. The quantum bandwagon is beginning to look golden.
And so, picture Tony Soprano with a rucksack, dragging a lawnmower behind, and you’ll have a good idea of Ray at his next gig. As a cabler, he’ll hike through the wilderness and lay down cable for the quantum computer overlords. The job pays well. Really well, actually . . .
How? And why does Ray’s trail name make his fellow cablers shudder? Why does his employer hire humans to do work that its robots can do better?
With each footstep, Ray creates more money, more enemies, and more questions. The tone is uneasy from beginning to end, really; unfolding, refolding mysteries spook and entice us at the same time. It is a treat to watch.
And top notch moviemaking makes it so. Lapsis appears to be the baby of Noah Hutton: He wrote, directed, edited, and composed its music. This is an impressive workload, but especially so given how subtle and powerful each of those aspects is. Erica A. Hart has picked a wonderfully realistic and talented cast (with Madeline Wise standing out as the reserved but piercingly intelligent foil to Ray). And Mike Gomes’s cinematography gives us grains and hues and symmetry that make us see the cables in trees and the vines in computers.
This is a movie to watch, and these are moviemakers to follow.