Opening the FrightFest strand of this year’s Glasgow Film Festival is science fiction set piece Psyche directed by Stephon Stewart. Set against a sun-kissed isolated environment, the film ponders the idea of limbo and the liminality of human existence.
Awakening to find herself in a desolate wasteland, Mara (Sarah Ritter) discovers an analog computer from the 1980s buried in the sand, with two distinct voices emanating from the artifact. As one sets her a challenge to reach points of destination before time cruelly runs out, the other friendlier voice earns the position as her ally in order to help her through this mysterious game. As Mara travels through this unforsaken landscape, she must explore her own past, her traumas, her regrets and come face to face with a sense of redemption in order to solve the puzzles and challenges laid before her.
Utilising breath-taking scenic shots, Psyche seems to question what it means for an individual to have reached a pinnacle point in their lives, in which the challenges ahead depend on their own abilities to retrospectively look in on themselves and gain perspective on their own shortcomings. Symbolised by Mara’s position within a physical representation of the sands of time, we see a liminal space within both the human psyche and the lifeline of such an individual. To gain any sort of traction in our lifetime, we must constantly reassess what has come before by facing our own fears and failings, and only those with an unwavering sense of belief in themselves will succeed in moving forward.
Whilst thematically and philosophically Psyche contains a strong backbone, it wasn’t quite enough to hold the film’s momentum, even in its relatively short run time of an hour and eleven minutes. With a lack of development in both plot and solid characterisation, it begins to lag once the subtext is understood. Perhaps more characterisation and a fully realised story would have given the film more strength in that regard.
With a slight comparison to Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957) and just a touch of the surreal, Psyche is a psychological chess game between life and death, except death is an annoying analog computer and the game's rules are anyone’s guess.
2 Screams out of 5
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