Second Sight DVD, out now

‘What’s on your mind?’

There have been precious few good, low-budget psychological SF/horror thrillers of late. Precious few at all, in fact, in the history of cinema. Movies such as The Stepford Wives or Cube, for example, Under the Skin, Moon and The Ghoul are few and far between. It Lives (originally called Twenty Twenty-Four as it did the rounds of the festival circuits) is definitely an attempt to make a grab for the kind of audience who might enjoy the others. But does it really succeed?

The movie begins with text which sets the scene, telling us that the world is on the brink of disaster and scientists beaver away alone in underground bunkers to prepare for the time when things go belly-up permanently. It’s appropriate, because the only companion our protagonist Roy (Andrew Kinsler, looking for all the world like a more harassed David Tennant) has is a HAL 9000-esque computer called Arthur, who communicates through words on a clear screen.

While going through his daily duties maintaining Plethura, which includes releasing the pressure in some kind of boiler room, Roy slices his hand open but refuses to report it. As things start to get progressively worse ‘up top’, ticking down from Two Minutes to Midnight, to One Minute on the Doomsday Clock, Roy begins to feel strange side effects which might be an infection of some kind, radiation, or just the result of his isolation. At the same time an entity has apparently infiltrated the bunker (‘It Lives!’ is the helpful summation Arthur gives, over and over). Something that looks just like Roy, but is also in his nightmares. As the infection spreads throughout his body and he can’t get any straight answers, leading him to suspect he might be the subject of a particularly cruel psychological experiment, he begins to question his own sanity – and whether Arthur is really on his side at all…

This is a movie that’s competently shot, making good use of the minimal amount of sets to rack up the tension. And there are some genuinely creepy moments where Roy is being stalked by his doppelganger, one especially involving the wheel-lock on a door. But ultimately its low budget constraints hamstring it, and the 88 minute running time is just too long for such a slight idea and story. What might have made quite a decent, taut Outer Limits episode, feels stretched here as we follow Roy down corridor after corridor, or watch him have yet another conversation with Arthur that ultimately goes nowhere. It’s a shame, as there’s definitely potential here and I can certainly see what writer/director Richard Mundy was trying to achieve; he’s almost certainly got a very bright future ahead of him in the industry.

If you hate ambiguity or being on the back foot throughout a film, then you need to leave this well enough alone. But if you like a challenging watch, there will probably be enough here to hold your attention and have you debating what you’ve just seen with friends. A few extras might also have been nice, so we could see the kind of journey it’s had to DVD and what the writer/director had in mind when he set out.

Verdict: Get it under control! 7/10        

Paul Kane