BY JOE X YOUNG
Fans of films such as Existenz and Videodrome might wish to take a butchers at Sequence Break as it belongs in the same Universe. The man behind this project is Graham Skipper, a name which may be familiar to some for his performances in Almost Human, Beyond the Gates and as Herbert West in the Re-Animator musical. Having not already done enough for the genre he now tries his hand at writing and directing his own movie, and a pretty fine job he’s made of it too. A ‘sequence break’ for anyone unfamiliar with gaming parlance is when the player either finds or attempts to create a causality breach in the coding which would enable them to do non-linear things, such as pick up items before they should normally become available. It’s not hacking per-se, more the discovery and exploitation of coding oversights or integrated gags, such as the ‘sweet spot’ in Pac-Man where he can stay for ages without being discovered; enabling the player to rest his thumb and grab a coffee. We’re talking the early days here, with the Arcade Machines of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Arcades and the relevant machines aren’t so popular these days, with most people playing on home systems or portable devices, and Oz (Chase Williamson) is on the verge of losing his job. His employer Jerry (Co-Producer Lyle Kanouse) has finally decided to call it a day and sell the business he has which isn’t a coin-op Arcade but rather a restoration business refurbishing the machines. A nice touch is that Jerry, knowing that Oz doesn’t have a pot to piss in and has been so loyal to the business, decides to give 50% of the sale to Oz. That, however is not really what this whole thing is about, it’s actually a multi-level love story. Ewww…. YUK! Ah, but it’s not as bad as you might think, partly because the love story here is one of the love of old gaming systems which Oz has a knack with and brings them back from the dead. There’s a secondary love story involving every nerd’s wet dream, a beautiful girl who is a gaming nerd, Tess (Fabianne Therese) who just so happens to end up in a whirlwind romance with our hero Oz. Oz finds an envelope with a circuit board in it, which he installs in a console, revealing a game he’s never seen before, which of course he decides to try. There comes a stranger, credited as ‘Man’ (Johnny Dinan), a wild hobo type who keeps turning up and giving Oz cryptic warnings about the game, which has a bizarre absorbing effect on Oz with some sexual sequences a-la David Cronenberg involving him much more with the game than with Tess. A quick note about the actual game itself, although it appears to be a shoot-em-up with vector graphics it’s really quite beautifully designed, far beyond the likes of BattleZone, Tempest and others of the era, yet still seems to fit in fantastically well with the whole scenario. The game has a serious effect on Oz, physically and mentally altering him into something he didn’t expect, pushing him beyond his own human limitations. He has to fight to save his own humanity and Tess before it’s too late. It tips a wink to the 80s in a big way, which is no bad thing, and although others have done it better this film really is effective in building a surrealist nightmare which has far deeper psychological connotations than are perhaps intended. If you are indeed a fan of the David Cronenberg type back catalogue this is going to be one to watch, if you’re like me and not that big a fan it’s still a damned good film. It’s deep, whimsical and crazy and very nostalgic, I liked it a lot. 
BOOK REVIEW: PRACTITIONERS BY MATT HAYWARD AND PATRICK LACEY
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