Alexis Ren, drama, James Croke, Latency, Margarita Bakhtina, movies, reviews, Robert Coleby, Sasha Luss
July 21, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by James Croke
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the dramatic film “Latency” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A virtual reality gamer, who has agoraphobia, questions her sanity when she sees people and things that might not exist.
Culture Audience: “Latency” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in psychological dramas and don’t mind if the plots are mindless.
“Latency” takes a potentially solid idea for a thriller (a virtual reality gamer begins to lose her sanity) and makes it an incoherent, boring mess. It’s hard to take this psychological movie seriously when it’s so stupid. The acting is also horrendous.
Written and directed by James Croke, “Latency” is his feature-film directorial debut. The movie has nothing interesting to say and just has repetitive scenarios that take place in one location: an apartment in an unnamed U.S. city. (“Latency” was actually filmed in Bangkok, Thailand.) A virtual reality gamer named Hana (played by Sasha Luss) is seen in the beginning of the movie testing out a game where players do gun battles against human-sized alien monsters.
Hana, who’s in her early 30s, makes some money from doing this type of testing job, but it’s apparently not enough money for her to pay her rent. More than once during the movie, Hana’s unseen landlord (voiced by Robert Coleby) goes to her closed door and asks her to pay her overdue rent. Hana promises him that she will have the rent for him, but in reality, she broke and doesn’t know where she’ll get the money. “Latency” is so poorly written, the movie reveals almost nothing about Hana except some trauma she’s experienced in the past and present.
It’s soon revealed that Hana is a shut-in with agoraphobia, which is a fear of leaving an environment that is considered safe. Hana is so afraid of opening her apartment door, it’s an ordeal for her to sign for deliveries. It’s later revealed that when Hana was a child, her mother was very fearful of Hana going outside and forced Hana to stay in their home.
Hana developed her love of video games during this time and still has a special fondness for playing Tetris. Almost nothing is told about Hana’s father except that he is dead. The movie doesn’t say when he died, but Hana looks at photos of him in a scene in the move.
Hana’s only apparent friend is a woman named Jen (played by Alexis Ren), who’s about the same age as Hana and visits her at random times in the movie. Hana and Jen are the only two people in the movie who have significant speaking roles in the movie. Jen is talkative and obnoxious. For example, during one of the times that Hana’s landlord is at the door to ask for the overdue rent money, Jen yells at him through the door to go away and calls him a “geriatric asshole.”
One day, Hana gets a package delivered to her for a device called Omnia, which can be worn on someone’s head. Omnia is a brain-computer interface that’s capable of picking up brain waves and then controlling every device, game and program that the Omnia wearer is using. It just leads to some time-wasting scenes of Hana using her computer through mind control.
“Latency” looks like it might turn into a horror movie because of scenes showing Hana seeing a mysterious, unnamed girl (played by Margarita Bakhtina), who’s about 5 or 6 years old, in the hallway outside of her apartment. The first time this girl is seen in the movie, she asks Hana, “Why are you scared?” Hana answers, “I’m not.” This the type of dreadfully dull dialogue that’s in the movie.
There’s some sloppily written nonsense about Hana entering a video game tournament where she hopes to win money to pay her rent and other bills. She uses the screen name Banshee. Hana keeps seeng this mystery girl in the hallway, but no one seems to know who the girl is. Is this girl real or just in Hana’s imagination? Hana also starts to have nightmares of a woman who looks like a witch, although it’s pretty obvious which woman is really haunting Hana.
Luss’ uneven performance is either too stiff in some scenes or has bad over-acting in other scenes. Ren gives a performance that isn’t much better. The cinematography has dark brown murkiness, which looks very fake and unappealing. The ending of the movie is absolutely horrendous. Viewers will be wondering throughout this entire terribly conceived film: “Why was this pointless movie even made?” The only real usefulness that “Latency” might have is to help insomniacs fall asleep.
Lionsgate released “Latency” in select U.S. cinemas on June 14, 2024. The movie was released on digital and VOD on July 9, 2024.