Warning Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Warning Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 14, 2021

Warning is a film with what I might call "Magnolia Syndrome", in that it attempts to offer a veritable glut of vignettes involving a bunch of people who sometimes but not always have tangential relationships to each other. A lot of people found Magnolia indecipherable, and for those folks I would caution that Warning will come off as well nigh totally opaque, since screenwriters Jason Kaye, Rob Michaelson and Agata Alexander (who also directed) don't offer the same (relative?) clarity that Paul Thomas Anderson did in his ensemble piece. The fact that the film's trailer, included on this disc as the sole supplement, also features an element completely missing from the final film may suggest that things were tweaked at some point during the production or post- production process which led to a bit of the disjointed feeling the film offers. All of this said, Warning is an unusually gripping science fiction film that has a lot on its veritable mind (some may feel too much), and it also has a rather acerbic view of Mankind and where we're all heading. The fact that the film closes with a probably cheap but still unabashedly hilarious punchline may deflate some of the apocalyptic fervor leading up to that revelation (a pun only those who see the film will understand), but Warning is a generally audacious feature film debut for Alexander, who has evidently made her early career out of fashioning music videos for various acts, including Limp Bizkit.

Just in case any of you aren't already feeling like things have gone rather horribly wrong in any number of ways on this planet, Agata Alexander seems to be suggesting that while that may indeed be true (as she will document in various tales in the film), things may not be seriously better in the wild blue (and/or black) yonder. David (Thomas Jane) is a self described "space janitor" tasked with maintenance on some kind of satellite device. Something goes horribly awry in the film's very opening moments, with an electrical charge sending a malfunctioning satellite hurtling toward Earth, and even though he's in space, an equal and opposite reaction sending David cartwheeling off into a vast darkness. The story then moves on to just the first of several vignettes, not all of which are frankly artfully woven into each other. The first of these struck me as a kind of Philip K. Dick-ian tale of an aging robot named Charlie (Rupert Everett) who has been consigned to a dealer of used goods and who is having a hard time finding a new home. Suffice it to say that this is just the first of several stories contained within Warning that do not necessarily lead to a rosy outcome.

A somewhat more comic interlude follows which documents the travails of would be "believer" Claire (Alice Eve), who owns an Alexa like device rather cheekily called God, a device which does indeed seem to be all knowing and, in a "new, improved" version Claire briefly owns, all seeing. This particular vignette may remind some of other "AI" adjacent offerings like Jexi or even Her, though it's played here mostly for kind of goofy laughs, as when Claire has to visit the Divine Genius Bar for a new device, only to be openly disparaged by the clerk there.

The next vignettes have some of the most interesting material in the film, but they perhaps suffer more obviously from what tends to afflict Warning in general, namely a lack of clear context and development. The first "episode" (for want of a better term) seems to be dealing with the relationship between Anna (Kylie Bunbury) and Ben (Patrick Schwarzenegger), though weird, interrupting "meta" data like "record" symbols and fast forward glyphs (see screenshot 5) keep intruding into the story. Next up is another couple, Nina (Annabelle Wallis) and Liam (Alex Pettyfer), in what again seems to be a "simple" story of Liam bringing girlfriend Nina home to meet the family. In the first vignette, there's a VR aspect that plays into memory almost like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and in the second vignette it turns out humans have echelons of immortality (or mortality, as the case may be), which is just one sign of socioeconomic differences.

Socioeconomic differences are hinted at in what is perhaps the most disturbing vignette in the film, one which follows a young woman named Magda (Garance Marillier) who has sold her body in a manner of speaking to some kind of high tech firm which allows someone to pay for the privilege of taking over someone else's psyche, I guess kind of like Possessor. As with several other characters in the film, things don't go particularly well for Magda, despite her understandable attempts to free herself from a life with a harridan mother in a dilapidated mobile home.

There are a couple of other characters who waft in and out of this enterprise, but as the foregoing information may hint at, Warning is more about its individual components than any aggregate impact, which may in fact be fleeting, despite a fitful attempt in the film's closing moments to tie everything together. This is a very interesting effort, though, and had it been just a bit more fleshed out, I think it could have been a provocative cult hit. The fact that some may feel Alexander arguably throws it all away in the last second with what I personally at least found to be a very funny punchline, may lead those with less jaded senses of humor than I have feeling like any "messages" Alexander intended to impart are therefore discounted. I'd argue that keeping a sense of humor about all the insanity a lot of us have had to live through on a day to day basis, especially recently, is one of the most useful life skills imaginable.

Warning Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Warning is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.38:1. This is a rather striking looking feature, though I haven't been able to track down any authoritative technical information on the shoot. The imagery is sharp and well detailed, and some regular occurrences of CGI actually are surprisingly well detailed for what I assume was not a mega-budgeted feature. There are a number of intentional tweaks added to things along the way, including supposed "video" elements and some POV shots, some of which can offer less fulsome detail levels than the bulk of the presentation. The palette pops agreeably throughout, and a couple of luridly lit and/or graded sequences offer very vivid suffusion. This is yet another recent Lionsgate release where there's some banding in evidence, especially noticeable in some of the outer space material with David.

Warning Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Warning features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that provides good engagement of the side and rear channels for some effects sequences, and with regard to the score, but which may slightly disappoint those thinking a "science fiction film" should have slam bang sonics all of the time. There are some really interesting uses of a sometimes almost hallucinogenic sound design, though, especially in moments like the whole Magda sequence, and some individual effects, like Nina pounding on a glass ceiling of Liam's house, are also quite well done. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Warning Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (HD; 1:50) is interesting in that it features a "countdown to destruction" element that is nowhere to be seen in the film (at least not in this particular way).

Additionally, a digital copy is included and packaging features a slipcover.

Warning Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Warning has to be awarded a few kudos for not overtly spelling out everything and allowing viewers to put a few puzzle pieces together themselves, but even so, I'd argue the film would have had more visceral power had a bit more information been given about this dysfunctional "future" world that seems awfully similar in many ways to what we're currently experiencing (down to and including a reference to so-called Covid-28 late in the film). Warning doesn't quite hit the bullseye, but I found it to be a rather provocative effort on several fronts. Technical merits are generally solid, and Warning comes Recommended.