Extraction aka Extracted, 2012.
Directed by Nir Paniry.
Starring Sasha Roiz, Jenny Mollen, Dominic Bogart, Richard Riehle and Nick Jameson.
SYNOPSIS:
A scientist who has invented a technique to watch people’s memories finds himself in a dangerous situation after he’s tasked with entering a heroin addict’s mind to see whether the man committed murder.
Watching this film you could quite easily, and rather lazily, tag it as a low budget Inception bandwagon-rider which is rather cheekily hoping to cash in on Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece. I could maybe let you have the “rooting around in people’s minds bit”, but if you attempted to find anything else similar you’d be grasping at straws and I’d cut you off mid-sentence, point you back in the direction of the DVD player and tell you to go watch it again, but this time paying attention to what is on the screen. Let me give you the 4-1-1 about it…
Tom Jacobs (Sasha Roiz; Caprica, Warehouse 13) is a brilliant whizz-bang engineer who creates a device that can enter the mind of a patient who has suffered a trauma (in the past, not the future ‘cos that would be bonkers), enabling him to provide help and understanding for any life problems that they now harbour. Running out of hard cash, his agent (of sorts) finds him an interested party willing to fund the research. His wife (Jenny Mollen; Crash, Crazy Stupid Love), is not overly impressed with the direction Tom’s research is going but stands by and watches her husband become more and more obsessed with his device. With the device barely finished Thomas’s mysterious “Interested Party”, the Justice Department, wants to see where their money is being spent. Using the device to enter the mind of drug user Tony (Dominic Bogart; I’m not a Hipster, FlashForward), who has possibly murdered his girlfriend, they hope to see what actually happened to secure a conviction. After seeing Tony’s memories, the device goes a wee bit wrong and leaves Tom’s mind trapped inside the looping memories of Tony. Four years later Tom is still trapped in Tony’s mind when Tony notices him, finally giving him a chance of getting back to his body, wife and daughter.
I really rather enjoyed all of this film to be brutally honest with you. I went into it expecting (as mentioned earlier) some sort of really bad Inception knock-off, but what I was left with was a rather good episode of the revamped Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits. It’s clearly a made-for-DVD release as there was no shine nor budget wasted on flashy effects or zero-G fights in confused corridors; what we were left with is a good sci-fi story and actors playing their parts rather well. The only two negative comments I could give are 1) During the middle section of the film it slows down a bit and could have had a few minutes trimmed, and 2) There was a faint whiff of Hallmark family sweetness running through the film that I couldn’t waft away. These two points though are not film killers and I am glad I was given the chance to watch it. If you happen to see this on the shelf you won’t be disappointed buying it.
Flickering Myth Rating: Film ★ ★ ★ / Movie ★ ★ ★ ★
Villordsutch is married with kids and pets. He looks like a tubby Viking and enjoys science fiction. Follow him on Twitter.
Originally published August 26, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
