By Kyle Laugh
Sequence Break is a 2017 horror film written, directed and produced by Graham Skipper ( actor in 'Almost Human’, 'The Mind’s Eye’ and ‘Beyond The Gates’.
The film stars Chase Williamson ( Beyond The Gates, SiREN, Victor Crowley ), Fabianne Therese ( Starry Eyes, Southbound, John Dies At The End) and John Dinan ( The Village, Webcam Girls ).
The film caught my attention right from the get go. Asides from it starring Chase Williamson, a favorite of mine in the genre, it dives right into the story with the use of old school arcade games. None of which I personally recognized but it brought me back to those great moments as a child hanging out at one of the local arcades. A place where me and my friends would spend way too much of our hard earned dollars or the dollars are parents were hard at work trying to make in order to support us as was the case was during those years.
With this planted directly in front of me, I immediately thought I was going to be in for a hell of a treat.
The first half of the film gets immediately into story building for the main characters setting up their meet-cute, a small portion of their history leading them to where they are now as well as their common interests, this being video games.
The build up of the antagonist, his video game and it's ability to take control of the users mind and aspects of their reality is very spotty with very little background provided to allow viewers to piece together what, why and how come any of this is taking place. This is only an issue until the reveal of what his master plan is, has been spoon fed to viewers through his dialogue. A simple way of ensuring the audience stays on the same page but not something I'm really a big fan of seeing done.
With such a small cast ( five actors total ), I was expecting much more background to be inserted for them with the end game resulting in most of the characters being left relatively unknown throughout the story.
On that note, the dialogue wasn't horrible by any means and was actually fairly well written but the true compliment of the film was easily the effects used in order to bring the game world into reality. It was also amazing to see the use of computer generated effects transition to practical effects giving the film a true 80’s creature feature feel.
The ending is a unique one, at least in my personal opinion as it's not really anything I've seen before. This serves as a way to clean up any issues the film may have brought up for those watching alongside a way to create a possibly happy ending. Even though the reason we come to said conclusion is a little bit tame compared to what I was expecting.
This is definitely worth a watch for the effects alone. If you need more substance than computer and practical effects, you may want to take a pass on this one.
Sequence Break is currently available for viewing on the Shudder streaming network.
4 out of 10.
TRAILER
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