ONE POINT O

Rated R for violence, disturbing images, gore, language and some nudity and sexuality.

Other titles: ONE PO1NT O (Australia title); PARANOIA: 1.0 (Spain, Hungary, alternate USA title); VIRUS 1.0 (Poland and Czech title); ONE POINT ZERO (Germany); UM PONTO ZERO (Brazil); THE ILLUSORY IMAGE or THE HALLUCINATION (Chinese/Mandarin); VERSION 1.0 (Russia); PARAN0.1A (Greece); UM PONTO O (Portugal); Bir Nokta Sıfır (Turkey)

When I watched ONE POINT O, I felt a familiar kind of uneasiness creeping over me. Familiar because it reminded me of another movie that I saw when I was about 12 or 13. That movie was Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER.

I know ONE POINT O has been compared with Kafka, Chronenberg, Lynch, Kubrick, and Aronofsky, but since I honestly haven't ever seen most of the afore-listed directors stuff, the movie that I was remembering was the dark science fiction film starring Harrison Ford. For anyone unfamiliar with BLADE RUNNER, it was set in the future, and though the production was adorned with bright city billboards, the film and the story had a latent dark, sexual tone to it. It was about a tired, jaded cop named Deckard who spent all his time on the job chasing androids that had been outlawed because of botched programming that lead to criminal behavior. Futuristic film noir. There was the bone-weary, isolated main character, a beautiful European-looking,highly sexual brunette who may or may not be trustworthy, and an assortment of weird city folks and sexy, sinister androids.

ONE POINT O has a few similarities to BLADE RUNNER as far as character traits. There is the troubled main character, the mysterious woman, and a bunch of eccentrics, all living in the building.

And there are robots too.

Otherwise, 1.0 is its own story, very original, unique, with a dark, unsettling, sensual tone that fills you with both dread and anticipation. Simon J (Jeremy Sisto, who also served as a producer) is a computer programmer who works out of his home, one of many apartments in a dingy, badly-lit building in some anonymous big city. Set in the near future, the story finds Simon receiving "brown paper packages tied up in strings" in his apartment, although he keeps the doors locked always. When he opens the parcels, they are empty. Naturally, Simon is disturbed. Who would take the trouble to enter his home, without his permission, just to leave empty boxes???!!! Is some twisted person playing practical jokes???!!! Why is anyone bothering a guy like Simon, who keeps to himself, minds his own peas and ques, and doesn't even go anywhere except to the grocery store to buy Nature Fresh Milk???

When two more boxes have appeared, Simon is so agitated and unsettled that he questions all of his neighbors: his friend Derrick (the amusing Udo Kier) who has a self cleaning sofa, and who is so lonely for a child that he is "building" an android boy named Adam; the friendly singing semi-homeless janitor Howard (Lance Henriksen, who, along with Kier's Derrick is some of the comic relief); the voyeuristic landlord (Emil Hostina), who is threatening to kick Simon out if he doesn't pay the rent; the kinky neighbor (Bruce Payne) who creates virtual porn; and the tired onocology nurse, Trish (Deborah Kara Unger). All of them seem not to know what Simon is carrying on about, and Trish even thinks Simon is an asshole when he regards her with anxiety and suspicion.

The once casual taste for milk has become an addiction of late, and Simon is paying outrageously inflated prices for the white stuff, even though he has always been allergic to it. He doesn't seem to realize, yet, that his lacteal existence might be just a wee bit abnormal??? Especially when his jonesing becomes so intense that he gets dressed in the middle of the night to go buy it by the cartons at the mini mart down the road. Simon's phone has been ringing a lot lately too, and it is the android Adam, begging Simon to be careful and "not touch the packages".

When the landlord demands that Simon come fix his surveillance camera computer system, Simon finds out that the landlord's fridge is packed full of red meat. I must commend the props and production people on this film, the disgusting clots of blood all over the packages of Farm Cut Meat were a great touch!!! I was gagging along with Simon, but it really is a testimony to the powers of persuasion we discover later. I mean, who!!! would eat meat that looks like that!!! Simon, wanting to know if the Landlord is up to no good, uploads the spycam stuff to his hardware at home.

Thinking the kinky neighbor is also suspect, because of a beef with the landlord over maintenance problems in the building, Simon lets himself be invited into Neighbor's unit to check out his latest game program. The friendly Neighbor offers Simon a glass of cola, and Simon is very uneasy to find that many familiar faces, his own included, have been programmed into the virtual reality porn game. While Simon's attention is diverted, the Neighbor ends up collapsing on the floor, covered with blood. "I've gotten packages too", the Neighbor gasps, and the door knob begins turning. Horrified, Simon scrambles through a ventilation shaft to escape what he is now convinced are conspirators, but not before he opened the Neighbor's refrigerator, and found cases upon cases of Cola 500.

It is about this time when one of the most beautiful and impressive scenes of the film occurs. Trish the Nurse happens upon Simon in the laundry room, and it doesn't take her too long to realize that something is very wrong. Simon is barely able to function. He's visibly shaken about something and he is beginning to feel like he is coming down with the flu. Jeremy Sisto's acting in this scene is absolutely dazzling, full of raw emotion. I am usually really impressed with his work. I never have to make great efforts to find the humanity and soul in acting. I'm always very satisfied, but I admit, a lot of the time, I am just analyzing and critiquing, not really getting fully emotionally involved. I found myself crying during this scene. Simon is so scared. He is used to being alone, a human amoeba, but now, with things happening in and around him, he has no choice but to reach out to Trish, for human comfort if nothing else. Simon J. is a vulnerable character. He has no idea who can be trusted. Even when he walks on his rare and reluctant excursions from home, he wraps his arms around himself as if he senses he's being threatened. Exceptional work!!! As a matter of fact, with no disrespect to Harrison Ford, I thought that the terrorized Simon J. was much more interesting, not to mention real, than macho Deckard.

The grim reality of society becoming more and more "electronic" and less "human" in the near future is most probably the motive behind The Neighbor, Trish, and Alice (the woman in the virtual porn game) being patrons of the nightclub. If, for any reason, you find it hard to figure out what is going on in this face paced, intricate story, I highly recommend the audio commentary on the USA DVD. There are so many motivations behind why someone is doing what. For instance, the aforementioned porn game and why the Neighbor and his friends like to play it.

Simon's paranoia increases a thousand fold after the grisley death of the landlord. Simon discovers the body, its head opened and the brain missing. He remembers disturbing newspaper articles about murder and the theft of brains. Even after he has had a home security system installed by a courier named Nile (Eugene Byrd), Simon does not feel safe. In fact, he is afraid of his own apartment now. Nile convinces Simon that a blood test might provide Simon with some answers to what's going on.

As Simon's strange malady worsens, Howard the Janitor offers a sympathetic shoulder, as does Trish, but it is little comfort to Simon, even after Derrick, Trish, Howard, and especially Nile the Courier try to help by starting to admit to things they didn't want to acknowledge. It's been hard to admit that some big evil corporation has been using them to make money. It's hard to face the fact that they are a bunch of little marrionettes at the mercy of greed and shameless tactics that involve little tiny robots, nanomites, electronic "insects" that influence their every move and thought. What's worse is that regular government medicine programs, the ones that would treat these mysterious illnesses and addictions, are broke, and the big FARM corporation is buying up everything, including Trish's hospital, in order to cover up the screw-ups that have cost some people their lives...

A big surprise I received with this film is that a character I was certain was going to be sinister, Adam, was actually the opposite. The mechanical boy is the first one to try to save Simon. He says things that are so upsetting to Derrick that the human unplugs him to shut him up. Adam is the one who is trying to tell everyone that things are afoul.

One question might remain after you're done watching: Will things be okay after all??? It turns out there is an unlikely hero in all of this, who darts in and undermines the intentions of the evil FARM corp. I got the impression at the end that this character was in fact, rescuing the unfortunates and whisking them away to a secret location where they would be "revived" in some fashion. I could be wrong of course. After all, it's hard to know, ultimately, who was to be trusted in this grim little world. Still, I saw a little smile in the very last frame of this brilliant, unique film, and I was amazed to find myself feeling optimistic after 92 minutes of ongoing bleakness.

Even today, three and a half years after it first came to DVD, I can still watch this film and learn something I didn't catch before. It remains an intriguing and startlingly original scenario of a possible future where greed knows absolutely no bounds. It still gets 10 out of 10 stars from me, or an A+++++++++++++++++!

Among its many festival appearances, ONE POINT O screened at Italy's RAVENNA NIGHTMARE Film Festival in 2004, the FANTASTIKS Film Festival in Lund, Sweden, and at the Stiges Fest in Catalonia, Spain.

ONE POINT O also gathered awards at Spain's Malaga Film Festival in 2005

Trivia: Jeremy Sisto and Padraic Aubrey served as executive producers for this film

Released on DVD in Spain through Paramount Home Entertainment