A Glitch in the Matrix premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It opens in select theaters and On Demand on February 5. Our reviewer watched the movie via a digital screener. Read more on IGN’s policy on movie reviews in light of COVID-19 here.
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Ever experience déjà vu or clock a peculiar coincidence and think, “What if The Matrix is real? What if all this is a computer simulation?” Well, if so, you’re not alone. Simulation Theory has a lot of believers, including controversial innovator Elon Musk. It might sound like heady stuff, but the curious new documentary A Glitch In The Matrix breaks it all down with energy and aplomb.
Documentarian Rodney Ascher is not new to conspiracy theories, having forged his reputation with Room 237 and The Nightmare. The former doc delivered a riveting deep-dive into fan theories about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. This included the eyebrow-raising proposal that the frightening film was in fact Kubrick’s coded apology for faking the moon landing. The latter focused on sleep paralysis, exploring its connections to international folklore and even accounts of possession and alien abduction. With A Glitch In The Matrix, Ascher traces Simulation Theory back to Ancient Greek philosophy, through Christian theology, the prophetic science-fiction of Philip K. Dick, and to the Wachowski Sisters’ 1999 epic, The Matrix, which shot this theory into the mainstream.
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In talking-head interviews, Ascher allows a batch of believers to recount their first experience watching The Matrix or otherwise questioning reality as we know it. A keystone to his work is an open mind that bestows to his subjects plenty of space and support to unfurl their theories, no matter how unusual. As such, Ascher bolsters these believers by presenting each in interviews as flashy avatars. Stripped away are their human faces and any physical identifiers, replaced by glossy CGI that transforms them into glittery wolves, roly-poly robots, and other outrageous creatures. From there, their recollections are re-enacted with video game-like graphics, illustrating the idea that this world might also be a collection of code and pixels.
Additional flash and cool cache are achieved through flooding the film with footage of a slew of TV shows, video games, and movies that remotely tie into this conversation. To illustrate how a simulation might prioritize processing power, Ascher cuts to the Rick and Morty episode “M. Night Shaym-Aliens!” When explaining that some people are purely NPCs (Non-Player Characters), World of Warcraft footage is wielded. Aside from The Matrix, everything from Star Wars, to Defending Your Life, Minecraft, Avatar, Batman Forever, Total Recall, and Horton Hears A Who are looped in. You could easily make a jolly game of calling out all the clips as they rollick by. However, whether this allusion-heavy approach helps or hurts the argument for Simulation Theory is up for debate. On one hand, such a diversity of representation of these ideas across multi-media might suggest there’s something to it. Or perhaps reality is so overwhelming that mankind is drawn to whatever answer allows us to escape, for better or worse.
Ascher explores the latter in a dark thread about Joshua Cooke and The Matrix Defense, which was deployed after a grisly crime. This horrid story leaves us to ask: What does it mean if nothing around us is real? If we don’t consider those we meet “real” people but simply NPC’s with no inner life or grand purpose? These are just a few of the many questions A Glitch In The Matrix poses, and Ascher has no apparent interest in answering them. Perhaps that’s why neither Lana nor Lilly Wachowski is interviewed in a doc that pulls intensely from their filmography. Maybe that’s why Ascher shields us from the unfiltered identities of his Simulation Theory believers. These interviewees offer details about their lives, including their jobs and religious background. Yet details that might be plucked from their appearance (like race, age, and gender) are left a mystery, leaving us unable to judge how to factor this into their experiences and worldview. So, we are left to wonder.
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