Empathy, Inc. (2018) Review
Hotshot venture capitalist Joel (Zack Robidas) has a multimillion-dollar deal go up in smoke, and he and his actress wife Jessica (Kathy Searle) are forced to move in with her parents and start from scratch. At the lowest and most desperate moment in his life, Joel meets old friend Nicolaus (Eric Berryman) and his business partner Lester (Jay Klaitz), who are seeking investors in a new technology known as XVR—Xtreme Virtual Reality—from their company Empathy, Inc., which is said to offer the most realistic and moving experiences for users by placing them in the lives of the less fortunate. Joel gets the start-up its funds but soon discovers that the tech’s creators have far more sinister uses in store for their creation and that the reality it provides its customers isn’t virtual.
Empathy, Inc. requires you to have a lot of empathy for lead character Joel who is essential a bit of an idiot. Joel gets burned by a business deal that leaves his life in tatters but then leaps straight into the unknown with another business deal, again putting his family’s well-being at stake. I didn’t have much sympathy for Joel but I was intrigued by this film’s strong premise and I was willing to stop groaning at the lead character’s actions and see where this goes.
Directed by Yedidya Gorsetman and written by Mark Leidner, Empathy, Inc. is an unexpected delight and arguably one of the finest low-budget sci-fi thrillers of recent years. After premiering at Cinepocalypse in June 2018 the film went on to appear at a number of other festivals before being picked up for a theatrical release, followed by a VOD and DVD release. It deserves to find an audience and I imagine has the potential to become a cult film. It’s a rare beast, a film based on an original idea that comes from the independent market, a market which nowadays generally lacks any dazzle instead relying on tried and tested formulas.
Shot over the course of six weeks in New York City in 2017, the filmmakers have opted to lens their flick in black-and-white and the choice really pays off with Darin Quan’s cinematography giving Empathy, Inc. a film noir vibe that suits the flick’s relentless ominous tone. It reminded me of David Cronenberg’s excellent Videodrome (1983) another film where the protagonist enters a virtual world and in doing so discovers that his actions have massive consequences for him back in the real world. Another film Empathy, Inc. brought to mind was Darren Aronofsky’s Pi (1998), another tale framed in black-and-white and shaped around an extraordinary premise.
Wrapped up within the film’s complex narrative is a mixture of genuinely felt menace and damning social commentary. Writer Leidner, director Gorsetman and their producer Josh Izkowitz previously worked together on Jammed (2014), a romantic comedy and on the evidence of their small portfolio to date I would be very interested in seeing what they manage to pull off next. With Empathy, Inc. they have succeeded in transferring a tricky premise into a coherent flick that has us enthralled and enraptured by its various mind-bending twists and turns.