Virtual Reality Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Virtual Reality Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson May 19, 2023

If you see Argentinean filmmaker Hernán Findling's Realidad Virtual (Virtual Reality, 2021), don't go into it expecting the characters to wear VR headsets. The title of the picture is misleading because the only VR the characters experience is of watching their AI selves on an HDTV sans any headgear or 3D glasses. The actors and crew members have just completed a haunted house slasher film. Matias (Guillermo Berthold), the movie's director, invites them over to his home for a wrap party and sneak preview of the feature that they very recently worked on together. On the final day of shooting, a producer visits Matias in his production office to drop off a mysterious USB drive, which contains a program with AI-interfacing technology. When cast and crew watch a cut of the film, they appear flummoxed and dumbfounded when they see scenes featuring themselves that they have no memory of filming. As the filmed subjects are injured and killed by a Celtic knight, there is growing dread that the same acts of punishments could be inflicted on their real-life selves. Will Matias's home turn into a dangerous haven of mayhem and bloodshed? Or can the filmmakers figure out how to prevent losing their real-life selves by communicating with their cinematic counterparts?

Gathered for a screening.

Virtual Reality is a self-reflexive experiment that effectively goes beyond film-within-a-film conventions. It would have been more effective had it given more insight into how the AI-interfacing technology works and can logically operate in a meta-narrative. It isn't explained, for instance, how the producer could essentially create AI clones of the film's cast and crew members. Did he secretly use motion-capture technology during filming? Could he have used footage from the cast's auditions and integrated it into the program that was built? Watching Virtual Reality, the viewer has to accept some unexplained happenings to go along for an often bumpy that's sometimes entertaining. The viewer may also be wondering about some oversights that Findling and co-writer Lourdes Prado Méndez don't cover the tracks of. For example, Matias's fingers bleed onto his laptop keyboard right before his guests arrive. How come the keys are magically clean after he invites them all in? How does he have time to clean his keyboard without someone noticing?

If viewers can past the picture's illegalities, they should derive enjoyment from Virtual Reality's intertextual references to horror/slasher movies. For example, there's a terrific exchange between Matias and his editor Hernán (Francisco González Gil) about getting the boy's voice in the movie to sound like Damien's from The Omen. (The original film and remake of The Omen are known as The Prophecy in Argentina, which is how it is referred to in Virtual Reality.) Hernán initially suggests that the boy sound like the demon that possesses Regan in The Exorcist but Mattias insists it sound like a male voice on the ADR. Findling and Matias also know slasher films well. Matias wears a long-sleeved shirt that has a cartoon figure of Jason printed on it. Overall, Findling is pretty clever with his tongue-in-cheek references.

Virtual Reality Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Kino Lorber, in association with Artsploitation Films, have released Findling's sixth feature on an MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-25 (disc size: 22.60 GB). For scenes showing the movie shot by the filmmakers, the aspect ratio is 2.39:1, both on Matias's TV and your screens at home. See Screenshot #s 4 and 15-17. For the scenes shot outside the filming of the feature and at Matias's home, the aspect ratio is 1.85:1. For that spherical ratio, see frame grab #s 1-3, 5-13, and 18-20. Screen capture #14 has been pillarboxed (with rounded corners) as it shows a Super 8 mm shot in roughly 1.19:1. Overall, the image looks solid. Black levels are deep but there is some banding. There's quite a bit of sunlight that comes through Matias's house (or actually, his parents' house where he still lives) that adds atmospheric effect (see 1, 3, and 13). Nighttime scenes are spooky, both in the filmed haunted house and the director's home. Kino has encoded the feature at an average video bitrate of 28999 kbps.

Kino gives the 85-minute feature ten chapter stops.

Virtual Reality Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Kino has supplied a Spanish DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround track (2558 kbps, 24-bit) and a Spanish DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo downmix (1630 kbps, 24-bit). The original score by Eric Claus Kuschevatzky and sound f/x on the uncompressed 5.1 mix are frequently loud as I'm sure Findling and his sound technicians intended. The primarily electronic music comments on the action with throbbing, pulsating notes that incorporate some loud bass. Delivery of dialogue is good. This is an aggressive mix.

Notes about Kino's subtitles: as I noted in my review of Sin Nombre, Universal placed the subtitles up in the picture area. Kino has done the same with two lines of text up in the image frame (see Screenshot # 20). If you have an UHD Blu-ray with several subtitle display options, you might be able to get the standard subs to display beneath the picture and only along the black border like I was able to do. On my Panasonic UHD player, I was able to get a majority of the dialogue beneath the image track without cutting off the font type at all. (1) I pressed the Option key on my UHD player's remote control; (2) in the Operation Menu, I scrolled down to Subtitle Settings; (3) I selected Subtitle Position; and (4) I decreased the placement value to -13, which fit all the words on my screen at the very bottom.

Virtual Reality Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1:33, 1080p) - the official trailer for Virtual Reality presented in 1.85:1 and 2.39 anamorphic widescreen (average bitrate: 9049 kbps) and accompanied with a 2.0 Stereo mix (2005 kbps, 24-bit). In Spanish, subtitled in English.

Virtual Reality Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

While watching Virtual Reality, I was reminded at how the titular director of Wes Craven's New Nightmare blurred the lines of the fictive world of filmmaking and the "real" lives of the filmmakers to such an extent that they practically merged. Director Hernán Findling is at least somewhat successful at this but he isn't the visionary or writer that Craven was. The realization of Virtual Reality's screenplay feels only half-baked at times. Still, it has some interesting creative ideas that are worth checking out. I can see an audience who enjoyed Bodies Bodies Bodies also getting something worthwhile out of this film. Kino Lorber's 2K presentation is for the most part very solid even as it switches between the two aspect ratios. The lossless audio is reference quality for an indie production. This is a no-frills disc and I would have appreciated some extras. A MODERATE RECOMMENDATION.