Kill Switch (2017) | Film Review

There is a lot of talk concerning virtual reality and augmented reality and how it is going to affect entertainment. I feel like we should instead be asking ourselves: Do we want to be put in the action, or just watch it from the safety of our seats?

We learned from Hardcore Henry that a film wholly shot in first person can be fun, but if creators don’t keep their viewer in mind, then images are moving too fast to keep track of all the action. Can VR correct this issue by giving the viewer the ability to look where they want to look? How much harder is storytelling going to be when you cannot take direct control of the viewer’s eyes and make them look where the story will have more punch? Is there a future in this kind of storytelling, or should this be something left to video games? Can a creator learn from their mistakes and make something that is both immersive and entertaining?

In Kill Switch, a pilot battles to save his family and the planet after an experiment for unlimited energy goes wrong. What we have here is a very simple story that showcases possibilities in upcoming technologies. What I mean is this: Two thirds of the movie you are looking at the world from the first person view of our main character, Will Porter (Dan Stevens). The other third consists of brief breaks where we can gather an idea of people’s motivations, back story, and understanding of what is happening in this world. The story is something very simple; person A takes MacGuffin B, to location C and it’s everyone’s job to stop that from happening. The story is predicable, and once you understand how the story cuts from segment-to-segment you can nearly set a watch to it. However, it really sticks the landing and doesn’t give the viewer what they may want for an ending.

Hardcore Henry – a fun immersive movie – makes one big mistake in that it moves too fast to see everything. It plays as if you are a passenger in someone’s head, but for some reason the latency is too high. Online gamers will get this: The viewers ping is too high. We see in real world situations much faster than 30 or even 60 frames per second. Processing images while moving quickly in a life situation is not a big deal, it’s what we are designed for.

On the big screen, however, we run into a distortion, and still images moving at a given speed will never have the clarity of real life. This is something Kill Switch improves on, as the movements Will Porter makes whilst we are riding shotgun are a lot more deliberate. Sometimes it’s anticlimactic because it feels a little slower than we would move, but at least we can see everything to a greater degree. The viewer doesn’t have to keep asking themselves: Wait what did I see? It is a lot easier to stay with the story and allow the visuals to take the viewer in. Adding to the experience is the sound design, which is stellar. A good surround sound system is a must with this movie.

The experience doesn’t work without Dan Stevens elevating the production. Without him the movie would be a great video game cut scene and nothing more. In the third person scenes, he owns the screen, takes control and sells the emotion of the story. In first person view, Steven’s voice work fits every situation perfectly, adding a sense of emotion when needed.

Kill Switch is really something that I would call experience viewing, watch it for a taste of what might be to come in the world of VR entertainment: a passable story, beautiful visuals, an immersive filming technique, and a great actor. It was easy to get lost within the movie, but I cannot see myself looking for this sort of experience all the time. Even with the voice acting excellence given from Stevens, somehow there still is something missing. In addition, I keep finding myself asking a lot of questions about what is to come from this sort of storytelling.

Now that I’ve come to the end of my article I have a few answers. 1 – In theory this might work best when the viewer is riding shotgun with zero control, so that the creators can frame and compose the story. 2 – Its fine for this kind of tale, but riding around as Captain America, Darth Vader, or Jack Reacher, takes the fun out of the movie. We are there to see the main characters, are we not? Not being able to see Stevens act out the action left me feeling like I missed something that would have been great. Ultimately, see Kill Switch for the experience, enjoy it for the possibilities, ride shotgun in Dan Stevens head because you can. Just know, this is only the beginning.