Movies
[Review] ‘The Matrix Resurrections’ Gets Deeply Nostalgic and Sentimental Over Legacy
In an age where IP is king, and sequels, reboots, and updated adaptations take precedence, The Matrix Resurrections appears to fall right in line. But what should a reboot or sequel be in the context of its franchise? Which approach best serves its legacy, and perhaps more simply, what is a reboot, remake, or sequel? Resurrections grapples with its legacy and place in film canon with an existential self-awareness in true Matrix-style. Only this time, director and co-writer Lana Wachowski gets far more personal and sentimental, bringing surprising humor to the mix.
Thomas A. Anderson (Keanu Reeves) lives a mundane life as the creator behind the popular video game, The Matrix. His company is eager to return to the decades-old game to find similar success, prompting Anderson to lose his grip on reality. Is the Matrix a figment of his creative imagination or an actual place? Not even his blue pill-pushing therapist (Neil Patrick Harris) can keep him from following the white rabbit once more to discover the truth.
Wachowski, along with writers David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon, pares back the scale for this affecting and more personal tale. While the original trilogy centered on a high-stakes war between humanity and machines, Neo did succeed in achieving peace. Resurrections uses the mysterious gap between Neo’s fated voyage to the machine city and the present to give room to reckon with the past and how the trilogy, and its characters, have held up over time. Anchoring it all is the familiar backbone of Neo and Trinity’s (Carrie-Anne Moss) love story.
Once again, their bond becomes the driving force of the narrative. Only here, it’s the all-encompassing element. Wachowski crafts a poignant and personal love letter to two characters deeply important to her, who brought comfort in the wake of losing her parents. It results in a far more touching, lighter story that allows its characters to age with grace and introduce new players to steal the spotlight.
Resurrections is deeply nostalgic. It consistently looks to the past, visually, archivally, and self-referentially, to reflect upon past choices, mistakes, and philosophies to ponder what that means for the present. That means it can get downright cheesy in parts with the sentimentality, but its emotional beats still resonate. So do the comedic moments in which new Morpheus actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II establishes himself to be quite adept. Jonathan Groff exudes charisma as Smith, but Jessica Henwick threatens to run away with the film as the fiery, rebellious Bugs. Not only is Bugs the catalyst for the story, but she’s the guide into a newer, stranger Matrix.
With the emphasis on emotional resonance and romanticism, the action suffers slightly. While Resurrections whisks Neo from set piece to set piece, many featuring impressive explosions and gunfire, Wachowski struggles with filming close combat and fight choreography. Some of it, particularly when concerning smaller supporting players, becomes incomprehensible. Luckily Wachowski injects enough variety in action, filled with heists and a high-octane final act, that it doesn’t become too much of a detriment. It also helps that technology has come a long way since the original film’s release, making for a visually slicker new entry.
Thanks to an endearing and entertaining reunion with old friends and new ones, the two-and-a-half-hour runtime breezes by. While it relies heavily on the past, it’s more interested in examining it from a current, lived-in perspective. It makes for a new entry guaranteed to polarize. This isn’t the Matrix that we met just over twenty years ago, but a modern update that builds on its legacy with surprising and often funny tenderness. Whether you’re willing to follow the white rabbit and take the red pill this round will depend on how much you find comfort in Neo and Trinity and their enduring love story.
The Matrix Resurrections releases in theaters and on HBO Max on December 22, 2022.
Found footage movies rely on immersion and a particular kind of suspension of disbelief in order to scare viewers, so it stands to reason that playing along with the “kayfabe” of it all is necessary for these movies to be effective. However, despite being something of a purist when it comes to in-universe recordings, I’ve come to accept that traditional productions can benefit from the occasional injection of found footage thrills.
For instance, Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation makes genius use of the analog gimmick in order to trap us in the titular rooms alongside our main characters before effortlessly switching back to a more cinematic language. In honor of these dynamic films that manage to combine the best of both worlds, today I’d like to share six other hybrid horror movies that successfully incorporate found footage into their scares!
For the purposes of this list, “hybrid” horror movies are defined as any flick that shifts between diegetic recordings and traditional filming techniques for a significant amount of time (or at least for pivotal scenes).
As usual, don’t forget to comment below with your own hybrid favorites if you think a particularly freaky one was missed.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. The Last Broadcast (1998)
Internet critics may have overstated the influence that Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler’s The Last Broadcast had on The Blair Witch Project, but the found footage subgenre still owes a huge debt to this underrated piece of avant-garde filmmaking. However, while the movie sets itself up as a documentary about the disappearance of a group of cryptid-hunters attempting to track down the Jersey Devil, things take a darker and much more grounded turn towards the final act.
I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoilers, but suffice to say that the jarring shift in perspective actually helps to sell the idea that everything we’ve seen before the finale was an attempt at using filmmaking to manipulate the public perception of a “real” incident.
Not bad for a movie with a $900 budget!
4. Cam (2018)
When you consider just how much the internet affects our daily lives, it’s strange that we don’t see Screenlife elements pop up in more movies these days. For instance, Isa Mazzei & Daniel Goldhaber’s highly underrated Cam only works as a freaky parable about online sex-work because it masterfully balances Madeline Brewer’s intimate moments with highly immersive segments within cyberspace.
While one might argue that the entire film could have been produced as a Screenlife experience, the hybrid approach allows the filmmakers to explore our main character’s life beyond the screens – with the duality of modern human existence actually becoming a recurring theme in the story.
3. Banshee Chapter (2013)
Most of H.P. Lovecraft’s popular stories were told in the epistolary format (where the text is presented as an in-universe compilation of letters or personal notes), so it makes sense that a spiritually faithful adaptation of his work would incorporate elements from the modern-day equivalent to epistolary fiction – found footage!
That’s why Blair Erickson’s Banshee Chapter is such an effective scare-fest, as this hybrid adaptation of From Beyond -retold through a conspiratorial lens as it references MK-Ultra and even secretive numbers stations- immerses viewers in a mind-bending tapestry of Cosmic Horror that blurs the line between fiction and reality.
2. The Deep House (2019)
The underwater setting does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s The Deep House, with the film being especially uncomfortable if you’re already scared of tight spaces and being deprived of oxygen. However, even the universally unsettling elements of the flick only work because the POV often shifts into claustrophobic footage courtesy of our main characters’ GoPro cameras.
Telling the story of a couple of YouTubers who encounter a haunted house at the bottom of an artificial lake while vacationing in France, The Deep House’s first-person exploration sequences contain some of the film’s scariest moments. In fact, I’d argue that the movie didn’t even need ghosts, as becoming trapped in the titular House already sounds like a fate worse than death.
1. Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)
My personal favorite instance of filmmakers successfully managing to combine traditional cinematography with POV filmmaking, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, is proof that the two formats can co-exist if the right story comes along.
After all, what better way to conclude a mockumentary all about reality getting increasingly more cinematic than by ditching the found footage gimmick altogether during the finale? Not only does this shift in presentation work on a conceptual level, but it also elevates Behind The Mask into a proper Slasher, which is probably why we’re so excited for that long-overdue sequel!
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