Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Kill Switch Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 20, 2017

Perhaps because elements of both stories have been used interchangeably in various cinematic adaptations through the years, it can be hard at times to separate aspects of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass. (The links serve mostly to identify something approaching the original titles of Lewis Carroll’s tales, not to suggest that either of these films is an accurate recreation of those works. The sequel was actually originally titled Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There.) One of the salient differences between the two stories is how Alice gets to her alternate reality. In the first tale, of course, she follows the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole, while in the second saga she steps through a mirror in the room where she’s playing with her cats. Once she’s on the other side of the mirror, she discovers everything is (once again, of course) reflected, meaning that when she picks up a book (which ends up containing Carroll’s immortal Jabberwocky), she discovers the print is “backwards” and she needs to read it by holding it up to a mirror. There’s something at least somewhat similar going on in early, initially unexplained, vignettes in Kill Switch, an intermittently interesting science fiction tinged thriller that finds a NASA astronaut named Will Porter (Dan Stevens) on a mission to a “looking glass” Earth where things like printing are in fact reversed. That gives the film an immediate visual hook that is quite compelling, though another artifice the film employs may be more noticeable. Long swaths of Kill Switch are told “POV” style, courtesy of a minicam that is part of Porter’s computer interface. This gambit may bring to mind other “first person” offerings like the 1947 noir based upon a Raymond Chandler story, Lady in the Lake, a film which told its story more or less resolutely from a “first person point of view”, giving the audience views of its hero Phillip Marlowe (Robert Montgomery, who also directed) only courtesy of things like mirrors he passes in front of. Kill Switch isn’t totally consistent in this regard, going for the first person conceit in “current time” sequences detailing Porter’s adventures on the mirror planet, which is called The Echo, while exploiting more traditional “third person” narrative techniques in long flashback scenes detailing how Porter came to this precarious situation.

Some of you may recall several years ago when some scientists from (I’m kind of chagrined to admit my alma mater) the University of Utah announced they had solved the riddle of so-called “cold fusion”, a discovery which, if verified (which it turned out not to be), would have instantly solved the planet’s looming energy crisis. Cold fusion may still be an unrealized dream, but Kill Switch posits something at least somewhat similar, in that a technology has been developed to provide Earth with unlimited supplies of its apparent lifeblood. The company developing this technology, Alterplex, recruits Porter for what are at first unexplained reasons. With the film ping ponging back and forth between Porter’s attempts to get a mysterious black box to a distant location on The Echo and the events which got Porter there, it takes a while for various plot elements to fall into place.

Because energy companies evidently cannot be depicted in film as anything approaching altruistic, it of course turns out that Alterplex is a bit of a sinister organization, and part of their approach to solving Earth’s energy crisis is to create a mirror image of the planet (that aforementioned Echo), which they link to Earth courtesy of huge towers that kind of look like one of those ultramodern buildings that dot countries like Dubai. Earth’s tower basically “sucks” energy from The Echo, but unfortunately for The Echo, there are disastrous anomalies there that ultimately force Porter to journey there to deal with the problem. Part of the film's probably too protracted "mystery" concerns Porter's attempts to figure out exactly how Alterplex wants him to solve the issue (the film's title might be a bit of a clue).

While there are all sorts of unanswered questions floating around this kind of odd foundational setup, at least the science fiction parts of the film tend to work in a generally pretty visceral manner. Porter’s discombobulation at finding himself on The Echo plays nicely against a different kind of confusion from the character’s past as he attempts to figure out why Alterplex needs someone with his particular skill set. Where Kill Switch tends to go at least slightly off the rails is with regard to Porter’s private life, where he’s attempting to deal with family dysfunctions involving his sister Mia (Charity Wakefield) and her son Donny (Kaspar von Grousen).

There’s a probably unavoidably disjunctive feeling to Kill Switch, with the first person and third person techniques kind of colliding with each other, though the film at least tries to hew to a certain kind of logic by having the third person elements play out as flashbacks. But it’s in the patently videogame like first person aspect that Kill Switch finds some of its most forceful energy (no pun intended). Stevens makes for an appealingly distraught hero, even if he’s not actually on screen in a traditional way for long swaths of the film (especially the second half, where the first person gambit tends to take over). The film is too fraught with melodramatic touches, including some of the subterfuges Alterplex is indulging in, but director Tim Smit, making his feature film debut (and adapting a previous short of his based on the same general subject matter), keeps things moving briskly and despite an apparently less than blockbuster sized budget with some decent looking special effects.

Kill Switch Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Kill Switch is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. I haven't been able to track down any authoritative data on the shoot, but this looks digitally captured, and it features what might be termed intentional resolution variances, with a lot of the first person "neural interface" cam work looking less sharp and well detailed than the flashback material. The flashback material is often pretty coolly graded, offering a glut of grays and blues, and The Echo is similarly often shorn of any vivid hues, so the palette doesn't really pop with a great deal of immediacy (one notable exception is the 2001: A Space Odyssey-esque trip through the portal to The Echo, seen in screenshot 9). In the flashback sequences detail and fine detail levels are excellent, at least with regard to practical sets and the humans in them. Throughout the film a lot of the CGI looks fairly soft, and when combined with the POV lower resolution shots, detail levels are definitely affected.

Kill Switch Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Kill Switch's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track has a good amount of surround activity, with regular placement of effects in the side and rear channels, something that actually helps the whole "videogame" feel of the film when it kicks into first person mode. A few thunderous sound effects offer powerful LFE. Dialogue is cleanly delivered and well prioritized, and fidelity remains excellent throughout, supporting some wide dynamic range.

Kill Switch Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Director Commentary


• The Visual Effect: Inside the Director's Process (1080p; 4:51) is a brief look at elements like storyboarding and production design.

Kill Switch Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Kill Switch's deliberately disjunctive structure may not help build much narrative tension (and it's notable that the film ultimately goes pretty exclusively first person), but there's an intriguing story at play at the center of the film, despite some inherent silliness and some overly melodramatic touches. This is an interesting debut for Smit who, armed with a bigger budget and a more cohesive screenplay, might offer something more powerful (sorry) down the line. Technical merits are strong for those considering a purchase.