Review: ‘Altered Reality’ (2024), starring Tobin Bell, Charles Agron, Alyona Khmara, Krista Dane Hoffman, Ed Asner and Lance Henriksen

February 17, 2024

by Carla Hay

Charles Agron and Lance Henriksen in “Altered Reality” (Photo courtesy of K Street Pictures)

“Altered Reality” (2024)

Directed by Don E. FauntLeRoy

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the sci-fi/drama film “Altered Reality” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Asian and Latin people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A medical research executive, whose daughter has been kidnapped and murdered, discovers a way to go back in time and change events. 

Culture Audience: “Altered Reality” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching time-traveling movies, no matter how incoherent and poorly made they are.

Krista Dane Hoffman and Alyona Khmara in “Altered Reality” (Photo courtesy of K Street Pictures)

Plagued by a disjointed screenplay, horrible acting and unfocused direction, “Altered Reality” is a muddled drama about time traveling and a mystery of a murdered girl. The movie concludes with an unimaginative ending that looks rushed and tacked-on, in order to pander to what the filmmakers think would be the most crowd-pleasing outcome. The only altered reality is the filmmakers thinking this low-quality film is any good.

Directed by Don E. FauntLeRoy and written by Charles Agron, “Altered Reality” takes place in an unnamed U.S. city. (The movie was actually filmed in Georgia.) It begins by showing a girl, who’s about 5 or 6 years old, sitting by herself and a table in a wooded area near her house, as she is making some drawings. Someone dressed entirely in black, including a hooded sweatshirt, appears to be stalking her.

Viewers soon find out that the girl’s name is Katy Cook (played by Quincy Faler), and she has been kidnapped by this stalker. “Altered Reality” tells the sequence of events in a very jumbled way, but viewers who are paying attention will see what led up to this kidnapping. It’s also revealed in the “Altered Reality” trailer that Katy was murdered.

Katy’s parents are a business executive named Oliver Cook (played by Agron) and a homemaker named Caroline Cook (played by Alyona Khmara), who were experiencing some marital problems even before Katy was abducted. Oliver is the owner and leader of a medical research company that is developing medication that can cure terminal illnesses. He is a workaholic who spends a lot of time away from home.

Oliver’s workaholic ways have put a strain on his marriage to Caroline and his relationship with Katy. Caroline feels neglected, and she suspects that Oliver has been cheating on her, because she notices that he gets calls and text messages on his phone from women she doesn’t know. It’s also mentioned at one point that Katy has been feeling depressed because she thinks Oliver doesn’t love her.

On the day that Katy disappeared, Oliver had promised that he would go bike riding with Katy. But instead, he backed out of that promise and was celebrating at a party with work colleagues because his company has had a major breakthrough in its research. Clinical trial results have shown that the company’s medication has cured all 5,000 people with terminal illnesses who were part of the most recent clinical trial.

In a meeting that previously took place between Oliver, the company’s cynical attorney Cooper Mason (played by Tobin Bell) and two other people named Dr. Ross (played by Demi Castro) and Spencer Ross (played by Kamran Shaikh), Oliver finds out that the medication (which comes in the form of pills) can be sold for $50,000 per pill. The company is expected to make billions of dollars after it goes public. Oliver and Cooper are understandably ecstatic, as Oliver tells Cooper how Oliver plans to spend some of these probable riches.

At the same time that Oliver was celebrating this business success at a party, Katy had been kidnapped. Caroline feels guilty because she had been looking after Katy but had taken her eyes off of Katy for only a few minutes. Caroline frantically tried to reach Oliver by phone many times after Katy went missing, but he ignored her messages because he was too busy partying with his colleagues.

Oliver eventually gets Caroline’s messages and rushes home. But it’s too late. Katy has disappeared, and there are no clues about who kidnapped her and why. The movie shows that nine months later, Katy kidnapping is still a mystery, with no progress in the case, although Oliver eventually finds out that Katy has been murdered.

In the nine months since the kidnapping, Oliver has become very wealthy because of his company’s “miracle drug.” However, Oliver and Caroline are heartbroken and feel guilty over the disappearance of Katy and have not given up hope of finding her. The marriage of Caroline and Oliver has been unraveling because Oliver has been coping with his grief by spending even more time away from home than he did before Katy’s kidnapping.

One of the things that Oliver did after he became rich is buy a bed-and-breakfast resort called Spring Manor, a place that has happy memories for him because he has been going there every year since he was a child. Oliver continued the tradition after he became a husband and father. His attorney Cooper advised that Oliver should not buy Spring Manor, which Cooper described as “a bottomless pit of repair bills,” but the sentimental value of Spring Manor had too much appeal to Cooper, so he bought the property anyway.

The Spring Manor parts of the plot are among the weakest links in an already poorly constructed screenplay. At Spring Manor, Oliver has been friendly for years with the manor’s elderly custodian Jack (played by Lance Henriksen), who is obviously a ghost, as viewers see when Jack shows an ability to vanish and appear suddenly. Oliver is so unobservant, he doesn’t think it’s strange that Jack appears out of nowhere like a ghost.

Jack also claims to have known Oliver’s ancestors who died hundreds of years ago. Oliver marvels out loud to Jack about how Jack has looked the same the entire time that Oliver has known Jack. “How do you do it?” Oliver asks Jack about why Oliver doesn’t seem to get older. Jack replies, “I see a lot of strange things here.” Oliver says, “It’s the energy of this place.”

As soon as these things are revealed, you just know that Jack has some secrets that have to do with Oliver’s ancestors, and there will be a time-traveling element that centers on Spring Manor. The cinematography lighting turns brown in the time-traveling scenes. It’s all so hokey and predictable. The musical score by Andrew Morgan Smith is trying to evoke noirish thrillers from the 1950s, but it sounds very out-of-place in a movie that takes place mostly in the 2020s.

One day, Oliver and Jack are having a private conversation outside at Spring Manor. Jack takes out a pill bottle after Oliver says he has a headache, and he gives Oliver a pill. Jack tells Oliver to take the pill only after Oliver finds out what the ingredients are. Oliver says he’s had these headaches for a while—and the reason why he has these headaches is the most obvious reason when Oliver predictably finds out that he can time travel. It takes an awfully long time in the movie (after two-thirds of the movie have passed) before he discovers this time-traveling ability.

After Oliver gets this pill from Jack, there’s trouble in the Cook household when Oliver comes home to find out that a woman (whose face isn’t on camera in this scene) is in the living room, is claiming to be Oliver’s mistress, and has exposed their alleged affair to Caroline. This self-described mistress shows Caroline proof on her phone that Oliver has been cheating on Caroline. Caroline is devastated and immediately tells Oliver that she wants a divorce. This scene is shown early in the movie’s jumbled timeline, and the scene is revisited much later to reveal the identity of this “mistress.” This identity reveal is also no surprise.

Oliver is so distraught over Caroline wanting a divorce, he becomes suicidal. Before he goes somewhere with the intent to hang himself, he stops off at a strip club and gives a wad of cash to a stripper named Brittany, whose stage name is Vixen (played by Kayla Adams), and he tells her to use to money for the future college education of Brittany’s underage daughter. Oliver met Brittany on the night he went to this strip club with Cooper and Cooper’s date Alex Parker (played by Krista Dane Hoffman, also known as Krista Dane King), a seductive fashion executive who happens to know Caroline casually because they’re in the same yoga class.

All of these storylines and subplots are shown or explained in a very messy way in “Altered Reality,” which clumsily mishandles flashbacks with sloppily edited scenes that take place in the present day. There’s also a pivotal plot development involving someone from the past named Kate (played by Kate Reilly), who has a personal connection to certain people in the story. Ed Asner shares top billing in “Altered Reality,” but his screen time in the movie (as Jack’s family member Mike Wilson) consists of less than five minutes.

As the writer, star and one of the producers of “Altered Reality,” Agron looks like he made a vanity project, because his acting performance is among the worst in a movie filled with bad acting. The movie tries to blend several different story ideas into one big concept, but it just doesn’t work, like pieces of a puzzle that don’t fit. Even without all the plot holes and unanswered questions, “Altered Reality” is a very dull movie that’s supposed to be a sci-fi thriller but is really just a sci-fi clunker.

K Street Pictures released “Altered Reality” in select U.S. cinemas on February 16, 2024.

Review: ‘The Garden Left Behind,’ starring Carlie Guevara, Michael Madsen, Ed Asner, Danny Flaherty, Alex Kruz, Tamara Williams and Miriam Cruz

September 4, 2020

by Carla Hay

Carlie Guevara in “The Garden Left Behind” (Photo courtesy of Uncork’d Entertainment and Dark Star Pictures)

“The Garden Left Behind”

Directed by Flavio Alves

Some language in Spanish with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City, the dramatic film “The Garden Left Behind” features a racially diverse cast of characters (Latinos, African Americas, white people and Asians) of transgender and cisgender people representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A young transgender woman who is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico experiences hateful discrimination and personal struggles during her quest to get medical treatment for her transition.

Culture Audience: “The Garden Left Behind” will mostly appeal to people interested in transgender female issues that are portrayed realistically in a scripted movie. 

Miriam Cruz in “The Garden Left Behind” (Photo courtesy of Uncork’d Entertainment and Dark Star Pictures)

The struggles of undocumented immigrants in America are rarely told in movies from the perspective of a transgender woman, but the drama “The Garden Left Behind” admirably and authentically gives a voice to this often-overlooked community. Directed by Flavio Alves (who co-wrote the screenplay with John Rotondo), “The Garden Left Behind” is anchored by an impressive performance by Carlie Guevara, who makes her feature-film debut in the movie.

Alves and Rotondo are cisgender men, so they did a lot of research before making “The Garden Left Behind,” a movie that was partially crowdfunded through eBay. Alves says in comments that are in the movie’s production notes: “In order to do the story justice, we met with more than 30 trans-led organizations, with hopes of including their concerns about the fictional story we were building. John and I wrote this story because we care deeply about the transgender community, and shortly after starting our research, we understood that it would require us to do a lot more homework in order to develop authentic characters.”

The filmmakers also made the decision to casting only transgender people in the transgender roles. And they had several transgender people in the behind-the scenes film crew. According to what Alves says in the movie’s production notes: “We were lucky enough to have the Trans Filmmakers Project join the production team of our film, providing us with a large pool of transgender representation behind the camera, so that they could gain experience making media, that will eventually help them to develop stories of their own. In addition to TFP, a long list of other fantastic organizations helped support the film, including GLAAD, who took us under their wing and provided special trainings for our crew of actors, advocates, and allies.”

It’s important to mention all of this information about the movie because all of that authenticity shows in “The Garden Left Behind,” which takes viewers on an emotionally powerful journey of one woman’s experiences in trying to overcome obstacles and discrimination from bigots who want to mistreat transgender people as outcasts. And the filmmakers should be commended for having real transgender representation on screen and off screen for the movie, because many movies about transgender people still don’t cast transgender people in transgender roles, and they shut out transgender people from being on the film crew.

The story of “The Garden Left Behind” takes an intimate look into a few months in the life of Tina Carerra (played by Guevara), a vibrant transgender woman in her early 20s whose goal is to make a complete medical transition into the female gender. She lives with her loving grandmother Eliana (played by Miriam Cruz) in New York City’s Bronx borough, and Tina is the one who’s responsible for earning the household income. Tina (whose birth name is Antonio) has been living in the United States with her grandmother (who only speaks Spanish and is also undocumented) since Tina was 5 years old. Tina’s parents are not mentioned or seen in the movie.

The obstacles to Tina’s life goal are very daunting: Tina is barely able to pay the household bills on her salary as a rideshare diver. As an undocumented immigrant without a college education, her career options are also limited. And she’s too proud to ask for help from people she knows, including her boyfriend Jason (played by Alex Kruz), an older businessman whom she’s been dating for the past two years.

Tina and Jason’s relationship is a lot like how romances are between trans women and straight men: The men often want to keep the relationship as secret as possible. This secrecy is starting to irritate Tina, but Jason is taking small steps toward making their relationship more public when he takes Tina out to dinner for the first time. However, it bothers Tina that Jason, who works in a corporate office job, still won’t introduce her to his family and friends.

Eliana is aware that Tina has been dating Jason, who sometimes comes over to the apartment for late-night trysts with Tina, but Tina hasn’t introduced Jason to Eliana, and it’s implied that Eliana doesn’t even know his name. The morning after one of these trysts, Eliana tells her that Jason is welcome to sleep over on the couch, but Tina brushes off the subject of her love life in a defensive way. Eliana sheepishly responds by saying that she won’t try to pry in Tina’s personal life. Tina also doesn’t know how to talk to her grandmother about her goal to transition into a fully biological female.

However, Tina gets emotional support about the transition from her transgender female friends. They include Tina’s outspoken and sassy best friend Carol (played by Tamara Williams), plus Amanda (played by Ivana Black) and Briana (played by Lea Nyeli). Carol is the one who recommended that Tina see a doctor in the city who has worked with transgender people for years and is someone who can sign off on the psychiatric clearance that Tina needs to be eligible for her medical transition.

Tina has already told Dr. Cleary (played by Ed Asner) about her family situation by mentioning that her grandmother is “the only family I have. We’re very close. Let’s just say she has my back.” During the therapy sessions, Tina also says that her grandmother often talks about certain fond memories that she has of Mexico, such as the food, their former family home and the garden that was at the home. The stories of the garden are so influential to Tina that she has become an avid gardener in a small lot in the Bronx.

Tina confides in Carol that Dr. Cleary is sometimes frustrating because he keeps asking the same questions. But in the therapy sessions, it’s shown that Dr. Cleary keeps asking the same questions because Tina is reluctant to answer the questions clearly. She either won’t answer or gives vague answers that are not enough for Dr. Cleary to give a full evaluation.

“We’re on the same team,” Dr. Cleary tells Tina, “but I need to know more so I can evaluate you.” One of the questions that Tina seems to have trouble answering is: “Why are you here?” It’s another question that Dr. Cleary asks Tina that finally breaks the ice and gets them to open up to each other: “Are you happy?”

Tina asks Dr. Cleary what the definition of happy is and asks him to tell her what makes him happy. He says that what makes him happy is waking up to his wife, seeing his children and grandchildren succeed, and doing his job. After Dr. Cleary shows himself in a more human light, it improves Tina’s ability to have candid conversations with him. Dr. Cleary eventually diagnoses Tina with having gender dysphoria, which is the diagnosis she needs to start getting medical treatment for her transition.

But Tina experiences major obstacles because she doesn’t have health insurance and she can’t afford the out-of-pocket costs that she would have to pay to continue the medical treatment. She also begins breathing and voice-exercise therapy to have a more feminine-sounding voice. In order to pay for some to these costs, Tina makes a decision to sell her car, which means she can no longer be a rideshare driver.

Luckily, she finds another job as a bartender at a local bar where she and Jason have been customers. Tina and Jason have had a friendly relationship with the bar’s owner/manager Kevin (played by Michael Madsen), who hires Tina on the spot when he sees that she has good bartending skills. Because she’s an undocumented immigrant, Tina ends up paying for a fake resident alien card (or green card) so that she can work at the bar.

Meanwhile, Tina has a passing but polite acquaintance with a young man in his late teens named Chris (played by Anthony Abdo), whom Tina encounters sometimes while he’s working at his cashier job at a local convenience store where she’s a regular customer. Chris is very quiet and shy, but he hangs out with a trio of rowdy, homophobic teenagers who are his teammates on a local baseball team.

Chris’ bigoted pals are group leader Oscar (played by Danny Flaherty), Adrien (Sidiki Fofana) and Leo (played by Will Kirsanda), who have no qualms about showing how much they hate anything to do with the LGBTQ community. On the night that Tina and Jason have their first dinner together at a restaurant, they are walking and cuddling on the street after they leave the restaurant. Oscar, Adrien and Leo happen on the same street, and when they see Tina and Jason together, the troublemaking trio starts yelling transphobic insults. The harassment brings Tina to tears, but Jason comforts her with a passionate kiss before they go into his place.

Unfortunately, it won’t be the last time that Tina and other people in her transgender community are the targets of hate. Shortly after Tina experiences this harassment, Carol’s close friend Rosie gets beaten up by police officers for being transgender, but the cops haven’t been held accountable. This hate crime sparks Carol to organize Trans Lives Matter protests, and Tina becomes part of the movement too. The protests and media coverage set off a chain of events that have profound effects on Tina’s life in ways that are both inspiring and horrifying.

“The Garden Left Behind” is not always an easy film to watch if people aren’t prepared to see the hatred and inhumane way that other human beings are mistreated in life. But it’s a harsh reality that is experienced by many transgender people who are often overlooked and treated as undeserving as the same rights as everyone else. The movie shows Tina’s political awakening when she begins to understand that by staying silent and doing nothing, she is indirectly helping the bigotry and hate crimes to thrive.

Although a lot of people can’t or won’t sympathize with Tina being an undocumented immigrant, her story is one shared by millions of undocumented people who came to the U.S. as children, through no choice of their own, because they were brought by adults who were also undocumented immigrants. Tina, like most of these Dreamers, is not a “charity case” who doesn’t want to work. She wants to be a productive member of society, but she also has the additional and costly challenge that cisgender people do not have: transitioning into the gender she should have had when she was born.

Perhaps by coincidence, “The Garden Left Behind” was released the same week as filmmaker/actress Isabel Sandoval’s dramatic movie “Lingua Franca,” which is also about a transgender woman who’s an undocumented immigrant in New York City. Whereas Sandoval’s character in “Lingua Franca” is at a stage in her life where she’s ready to get married, Tina has barely begun her adult life and is still learning about what it’s like to try to find a life partner as a transgender woman.

Although what ultimately ends up happening to Tina is easy to predict, that doesn’t lessen the emotional impact of the story. The way that Alves skillfully crafts the story shows that Tina, more often than not, lives a life that is very much like other young people who are financially struggling and worried about their futures. She just happens to be transgender and an undocumented Mexican immigrant, and therefore she has to deal with all the discrimination that comes with being in these identity groups. “The Garden Left Behind” should be essential viewing for people who want to see what it’s like for a transgender woman to find her voice and stand up for who she is, even if other people want to punish her for it.

Uncork’d Entertainment and Dark Star Pictures released “The Garden Left Behind” in select U.S. virtual cinemas on August 28, 2020. The movie’s VOD release date is September 8, 2020.

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