Science fiction has become increasingly sombre of late. That’s not to say it hasn’t always explored the intricacies of human interaction in some pretty heavy ways, but it at least feels as though this more often happened against a backdrop of bigger-picture world building, rather than the more intimate films we see more now. Step forward, Ultrasound (2021), an intricate and sensitive, if often gruelling, exploration of memory and certainty. It’s by no means an easy watching experience, but it is strangely compelling, and would certainly have much to reward a second viewing. Just as its key characters are often perplexed by events unfolding around them, so the audience is, too.
Through film noir levels of rain and darkness, a car, already driving erratically, hits a discarded piece of wood spiked with nails and gets a flat. The driver, Glen (Vincent Kartheiser) finds himself stranded, and so seeks shelter at a nearby house. In one of the film’s rarer light-hearted sequences, the homeowners are very sympathetic and helpful; given the late hour and the lack of garages anywhere near, Art (Bob Stephenson) and his young wife Cyndi (Breeda Wool) suggest that Glen spends the night. They actually seem to relish having a guest; well, Art does, though Cyndi is more reticent. The affable Art cracks open a bottle and he and Glen pour a few drinks. Glen soon starts to feel woozy, whether through the alcohol or the sudden impact of the car accident, but he’s about to feel more disorientated when Art suggests that Glen should take the bed in the master bedroom, while he sleeps on the couch. Oh, Cyndi’s in there, but not to worry; Art says he’s seen the way they looked at one another, and he’s not jealous.
Few things are crystal clear in this film, but the sense of something potentially sinister going on is very carefully doled out, expressed in conversations which are very organic and low-key, never grandstanding. Glen feels that he can’t really say no, in these odd circumstances, but he gets talking to Cyndi, and does feel a connection with her and her quiet, sad history. The story of Glen, Cyndi and Art begins to overlap with other story elements: there’s Katie (Rainey Qualley), a woman who would love a greater share of time and respect from her boyfriend, whose political position is keeping him away – or is there a different reason behind his behaviour? Stranger still, all of these interactions seem to be of interest to an at-first unseen group of people with some kind of experimental interest in Glen and Cyndi; it even seems that conversations between the latter are somehow known to those who watch them, or even under their control altogether. But where does Art fit in? And Katie?
Revelatory moments are held back in Ultrasound, either presented in a blink-and-miss-it format to be revisited later, or avoided altogether for as long as possible – so that characters blur together, events are never really stable, and elements of the narrative overlap. It’s not until over an hour into the film that I could get any sort of a handle on proceedings, with the experience up until this point feeling like a puzzle box – not easy, not necessarily straightforward, but engaging, even if frustrating too. From that hour until the film’s close, the ideas and the explication move rather more quickly, with more familiar fare as the role of science and to an extent, pseudoscience is examined: its highly ambiguous, manipulative aspects are, it turns out, the bedrock of what has been going on here.
There’s a lot of scope within the film’s central premise, and it’s largely carefully constructed, even when close to bursting with ideas which just needed a bit more explication to really round things off. Ultrasound takes concentration, though it still successfully places itself as a discomfiting watch – especially with its later positioning as an auditory nightmare. If it has any precedents, I’d think of last year’s Possessor, with its own study of the struggle for bodily and psychological autonomy, the idea of ordinary people suffering for others via technological developments. There’s less emphasis on body horror here, though, and more of a study of very ordinary people against increasingly alienating subtexts. I’ve seen it described elsewhere as pulpy, but its tone didn’t feel that way to me.
Ultrasound is director Rob Schroeder’s first ever feature, and a great leap apart from the short films he’s directed previously in terms of style and genre; alongside a first-time writer, Conor Stechschulte, they’ve clearly set out to do a wealth of things with this project, most of which land. As a cold, cynical exploration of human interactions, it’s definitely the ticket, and certainly fits in with that more introspective, detached style of sci-fi taking hold of the genre now.
Ultrasound (2021) receives its world premier at Tribeca Film Festival, Tuesday June 15th. For more information please click here.