Reviews
[Review] ‘Transference’ Takes You on a Creepy Virtual Head-Trip
Nestled among the usual fare at Ubisoft’s E3 2017 showcase was an appearance by Elijah Wood, there to talk up SpectreVision’s VR sci-fi horror title Transference. Once the trailer had finished, it was clear we had something interesting on our hands.
A head-tripping blend of first-person horror game and live action scenes set within a creepy simulation of several people’s brain data is certainly an enticing prospect, but can it deliver an effective brain-bending dose of existential horror?
The entire simulation is set in and around the home of Raymond Hayes, a troubled scientist with a streak of brilliance. He seemingly created a digital representation of himself, his wife Katherine, and their boy by using brain data from each, and those avatars are present in the simulation too. Unfortunately, there’s a corruption running rife inside the simulation as well, and you’re tasked with cleaning up the glitches and errors whilst uncovering the darker side to Raymond’s family life.
Transference is a familial horror underneath the sci-fi gubbins. It’s clear early on that Raymond’s obsession with his projects is taking a toll on his relationship with his wife and child and that may well be playing its own part in the strange and dark avenues this virtual realm takes you down.
You begin just outside the apartment block, tasked with looking for a key to the front door. Once you do find it and enter the building, you’re soon presented with an example of how messed up this simulation is after a disturbing scene in the foyer. So begins a nightmarish look into a botched science project saturated with family issues. What will be more disturbing? The flaws in the software? Or the revelations that could be uncovered about Raymond’s family life? You’ll find out soon enough.
Transference’s greatest strength is in its separation of perceived reality and the virtual world you inhabit. Strapping on a PSVR headset to enter a 3D virtual world is nothing new now, but for a game to actually make that process part of the game? It’s a novel, meta take and the game enjoys messing with its digital realm to disorientate you. There was a claim from Mr. Wood back at E3 that Transference would bridge the gap between games and film with its mix of FMV and digital constructs, but all Transference’s strengths lie in how it plays with the nature of being ‘a game’ and the FMV scenes that do pepper the exposition are actually quite limited. Effective? Yes, but they aren’t a seamless bridge between mediums that was touted.
The constant reminders that you’re in an artificial world include glaring error messages where items should be (usually a hint that you should find that item and restore the data to the program to help ‘clean’ it) and a dark glitchy entity who periodically stalks you around the apartment. You can also switch between different builds of the apartment, clearly taken from more than one point in time in the real world. This is integrated into puzzle-solving, allowing you to bring items from one build to another.
This is a game that’s assured enough to let you take your time discovering its story. That means the pace is on the slow side, and while that’s great for letting you really tuck into the smaller details of the Hayes family and their troubles, it is, unfortunately, a tad cynical with it. The entire game is an escape room, with smaller escape room puzzles chained together to crack the overall puzzle. This causes a fair bit of repetition and fumbling towards the next checkpoint. The puzzles are fair, challenging, and generally in keeping with the themes of the narrative, but certain times it just feels like you’re being tasked with busywork to pad the runtime (Transference clocks in a little under three hours). It’s a shame because Transference can be really good at ratcheting up the unease otherwise, and it’s the time afforded to each dread-induced moment that really brings the payoff.
That disorientation the simulation provides is another key aspect of Transference’s success. Overlapping and distorted sound bites, manic flashing glitch voids, and the shifts between software builds changing parts of the environment. It escalates slowly but surely before usually ending each ‘chapter’ of the simulation with a crescendo of disturbing imagery. It’s never graphic or gory, just an explosion of sensory assaults that are befitting of a game centered on a corrupted artificial world.
The brevity of the story does fit well for the pace, but replayability is limited. Once you’ve discovered all the secrets of the Hayes family the first time around, you’re left with some collectible pickups and little else as the knowledge gained from a first run does detract much of the spectacle, drama, and of course, scares from the story. At around $25 at launch, three and a bit hours of game is pushing it a bit, no matter how effective and absorbing it can get. Value is all relative of course, but it does feel like Ubisoft has put the game in a tough spot with that price point and it deserves better than that as a drawback.
It is at least playable both in VR and Non-VR modes, and it loses little of its atmosphere without a VR unit on your face. All the same, this feels like it was made for VR, both mechanically and thematically, so you do lose out on something by playing it on a regular screen. Whichever way you play it, savor it, put its occasional structural flaws to one side and drink in the delivery of its story. You may as well squeeze as much juice out of your first time with the game because it’s rapidly diminishing returns from there.
Transference is in some ways, a tighter twist on Bloober Team’s Observer (with a dash of that company’s Layers of Fear in the mix). But it never reaches the loopy and inventive highs of that game’s head-fuckery. Not that there isn’t merit to the strange and disturbing places Transference goes because it definitely has a good line in loopy. It just needed a bit more substance to the quieter moments.
PS4/PSVR Review copy purchased by Reviewer
Transference is out now on PSVR, PS4, Xbox One, and PC (Oculus and Vive)
It’s a day of the month ending in Y, and that means it’s time for another killer shark film. Why? Because they’re inexpensive to make, play into an easy fear, and keep finding audiences willing to give them a spin. The Bay is the latest entry in the shark attack subgenre, and while it’s noticeably better than last month’s Chum, it still struggles to barely stay afloat.
Emma (Francesca Eastwood) and Lani (Dani Oliveros) are best friends who’ve traveled to Thailand for a destination wedding, and a chance encounter at the buffet table leads to an unexpected adventure. Mandal (Alexander Wraith) is a friendly, knowledgeable transplant who connects with nature and makes a living by offering boat tours through the area’s scenic waterways. The trips culminate with the opportunity for tourists to witness a shark feeding with local tiger sharks. The tourists aren’t meant to be the food, obviously, but sometimes accidents happen.
The Bay checks off most of the subgenre’s expected beats – an attractive location, an iffy ensemble of characters, a series of poor choices – but it does a few things differently along the way. For one thing, while we see plenty of sharks in the build-up, the first attack doesn’t happen until past the film’s midpoint. Writer/director Phil Volken fills the time leading up to that attack with engaging enough character beats, some genuine suspense, and an abundance of dialogue about how sharks aren’t typically a threat to people – or threats like people. “Sharks hunt,” says Mandal, “humans kill.”
It’s a bit of foreshadowing, perhaps, but it’s also the film’s presiding theme. Sharks don’t want to hurt or kill humans, but “mistakes happen.” Mandal offers up numerous eco-friendly spiels about the role sharks play in the environment, how overhunting could lead to disaster, and how humans are the ones invading their territory. “Don’t act like prey,” and you won’t be bitten, eaten, digested, and shat out by a shark. Pretty simple, if you think about it.
Trouble starts when they toss a chunk of meat into the water attached to a chain and a large female tiger shark gets caught up in it. Mandal’s sidekick, a local man named Ruhan (Ta’imua), panics and starts stabbing at the thrashing creature. He has a history of being bitten by a shark and is clearly frightened, and as the situation worsens, he becomes a far more active threat to the others’ safety than the actual sharks. That character type is pretty common in these films, but it’s a curious choice to make the film’s sole indigenous member of the ensemble the morally weak link.
To be clear, Ta’imua is playing a local but isn’t actually Thai. He is, however, Hawaiian, and The Bay was filmed off Oahu, meaning he’s the only indigenous representation on both counts. The other three characters, all Americans, are brave and willing to risk their own safety for the group, leaving only Ruhan to put a face to the cruel, selfish humans mentioned earlier in the film. It’s certainly a choice!
His performance is somewhat stifled by the desire to make him seem menacing, but it’s passable. The others are equally okay as performers, but it’s only Oliveros’ Dani who stands apart as a spirited individual worthy of viewer fist pumps. Cinematographer Helge Gerull delivers some attractive landscape shots destined to make you consider a Hawaiian vacation, and composer Gad Emile Zeitune finds some effective aural backdrops for the film’s teasingly emotional moments.
Then there’s the sharks. A major drag on the subgenre these days is the use of cheap CG effects (including the abysmal use of A.I. in Chum), but The Bay sidesteps that problem for the most part. There are real sharks here, lots of them, but they appear to be solely present via stock footage edited into the film. Some CG is used here and there, too, with shots being comped together to tighten the proximity between humans and sharks. Most effective, arguably, are the practical effects used to create fins cutting through the water near the characters.
There’s a sense of grounded reality to the shark kills, and while they’re less showy, they’re weightier as a result. Wounded bodies drift away, and the moment where shark nibbles turn into ferocious feasting feels more inevitable and affecting than sudden or scary. The sole exception to the general quality of those kills is the film’s final shark encounter, which doubles down on the poor choices by pairing a silly CG beat with some poorly matched stock footage.
Pretty much every shark attack movie lives or dies on its presentation of the sharks themselves. There are exceptions, of course, with Steven Spielberg’s Jaws being chief among them – everything about that film, from the writing and acting to the directing and editing, helps make it a masterpiece despite the mechanical shark looking goofy as hell outside of the water – but The Bay isn’t Jaws. It’s not even Jaws: The Revenge. Its live sharks are mildly effective, though, and give it a subdued realism that will likely appeal to viewers averse to CG intrusions. Will that be enough to win them over, though?
“When you enter the ocean, you enter the food chain… and not necessarily at the top,” says an opening onscreen quote from Jacques Cousteau, and something similar could be said for shark attack movies in general. When you make one of these movies, you enter a well-trodden and densely populated subgenre… and you’re all but guaranteed to not be at or even near the top. The Bay is closer to the ocean floor than the water’s surface, and while that still puts it above the bulk of the genre, it’s probably not enough of a reason to step foot in these waters.
The Bay opens in theaters and on demand on July 17, 2026.
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