Sight Extended (2023) starts out looking like a space-set sci-fi; it’s only when you look closer that you realise you’re looking at a much more familiar, convex shape – a lens, specially-adapted to allow a person to access all of their push notifications, calls, maps, you name it, with a mere, literal blink of an eye. As such, the film is more about inner space than outer space, and the resulting story is a sad, often subtle exploration of a world of possibilities which is oh-so near now.
Gamer Patrick (Andrew Riddell) lives vicariously through his gaming persona. An agoraphobic young man, highly anxious, he’s a shut-in with only aspirations of a normal life; interactions with the opposite sex, for example, are on-screen only, with an early scene crossing quickly and disconcertingly into the Uncanny Valley. He even gets mistaken for a bot as he works, and of course he’s a WFH guy; how else could he work? Even his support group is accessed virtually. His sister Angela stops by on occasion, but she (Deborah Aroshas) treats it as a largely transactional thing, filling her pockets with his pills and furnishing her bank account with his money. His life has ground to an unsatisfactory, unsettling halt.
An invite to a high school reunion sends Patrick, if anything, into a bigger spiral of panic and self-doubt. He makes the mistake – though the mistake is easily made – of looking up some of his old classmates, and lo and behold, they are all (seemingly) doing great. True dystopia is often about such tedious self-owns, as well as the bigger, bolder picture; his feelings escalate, and this leads him, in his ineffectual anger, to rage-quit the support group which now seems to him to be nothing but a waste of time, keeping him back rather than helping him out. Fortunately for Patrick, a new option comes along quickly; another of the group’s attendees, a man called Alex, seeks him out and offers him a new kind of support via a new app.
What if – Alex suggests – Patrick could bring all of his confidence as a gamer to real-life situations? The app – called Refresh – can apparently blend both worlds, turning social events and situations into a fun, levelling-up situation as he engages with elements of various games (think Pokémon GO for melancholics). With nothing to lose, Patrick tries it out and, lo and behold, it works for him. It lures him out of the door. It gets him exercising. He even starts to enjoy himself.
You don’t really need telling that things don’t stay this positive – otherwise this would be a heart-warming tale of the benefits of tech, and not many films which come the way of this site qualify for that, all told. This is, and stays, a very personal, character-focused narrative, although Patrick’s experiences with the bigger picture of technology will chime with many. You can certainly see Patrick’s story as representative of something bigger beyond him, too. The world offered by the film, in terms of how tech is overlaid on the real, is only a touch more sophisticated than what we currently have; it’s certainly not a million miles from the roaring hive we’ve already built, either. It notes the worst aspects of social media and AI – it’s inescapability, its ubiquity, its irritating, matey tics – and escalates them, but only by a touch. The results look and feel very intrusive: it genuinely creates a mild feeling of panic. Other scenes, such as those which occur outdoors, look a little like updated takes from Blade Runner (1982), albeit in disarmingly broad sunshine. Gamers will also recognise some of the borrowed visual aspects, too – such as Patrick’s potential to ‘level up’, which looks awfully Bethesda, with a map of traits to navigate, XP to collect.
There are lots of these kinds of films around now, and as AI gets far more into its stride, no wonder (as I saw someone opine recently, we now have AI creating art and poetry while humans continue to do menial work. That feeling of things being out-of-kilter isn’t coming from nowhere.) Although some aspects of this film feels like a super-adroit update of The Lawnmower Man (1992), particularly around Patrick’s compelling transformation, it is much more a film for our times, with most in common with the excellent Black Mirror TV series. This film is engaging because it only-just exaggerates the world we already live in, where human interactions are compartmentalised into likes, interactions and comments. It also offers interesting comments on masculinity, and all of its attendant pressures and concerns. In fact, Sight Extended successfully blurs the edges of Patrick as a character; where does he end, and app begin? Is this all what he wants, or what he thinks he’s supposed to want? These are already recognisable concerns and flashpoints, explored successfully by this restrained and savvy film.
Sight Extended (2023) will be available in the UK from June 12th 2023. *Updated: for details on how to watch, please click here.