The Heart Machine

I certainly admire this film's attempts to expand the familiar Brooklyn-set indie drama into new territory, as a sort of post-mumblecore Blow-Up/Hitchockian thriller. It's obviously trying to say some heady stuff about disconnection and How We Live Now, but it only half works. Wigon can't seem to fully commit to his own conceit and the film sort of runs out of steam 2/3rds of the way through. On the other hand, Kate Lyn Sheil is great here as always.

There are moments when it feels amateurish, but THE HEART MACHINE is far from superficial, dealing with a sinister kind of paranoia and social anxiety that might cause one to use the internet as some kind of shield or buffer from reality. Yet it doesn't seem fair to lay all the blame on the internet, since these are issues that are very human and at the core of our relationships with one another, internet or no internet. Feels like a weird combination of Her and a Hitchcock film.

Never trust a poet.