The latest addition to the dream-versus-reality check genre is in Adam Morse’s new indie British psychological drama LUCID.
Introvert Zel (Laurie Calvert) is on the ropes, with a loving but unsympathetic mother (Sadie Frost) and a new job working as a car park security guard in the watchful eye of overbearing bully and head of club hospitality Theo (Cristian Solimeno). Zel has his shy eye on dancer and performer in the main club Jasmine (Felicity Gilbert) and wants to make more intimate music with her, but struggles with confidence, as she also lives in the building where he lives.
Also in the building is Elliot (Billy Zane), who offers him the chance to get more confident and closer to Jasmine by offering him the concept of lucid dreaming, which allows him to be whatever he wants to be and provides him with a journal to record any and every experience he has the morning after. However, the line between fantasy and reality starts to take hold….
OK, so this is pretty much what we have seen before in the likes of TOTAL RECALL in both versions and other mind-based offerings like some of David Cronenberg’s works. However, that is not the reason for watching this film.
LUCID is an extraordinary story thanks to the fact that writer-director Adam Morse publicly announced he was legally blind a week before the film’s premiere in Edinburgh at the 72nd International Film Festival, having started losing his sight a decade before due to a rare condition.
Morse certainly has to be applauded for his efforts here and thanks to the presence of Sadie Frost and Billy Zane in key supporting roles, LUCID is certainly going to get some attention and exposure.
It’s a thought-provoking affair like most of those similarly-themed offerings and if you like your science-fiction more grounded and intimate a la EX MACHINA, then you will be interested and intrigued by what Morse has presented here, a rarity in that it relies more on character than visual effects and keeps a consistency in the story line.
Worth a watch.
LUCID will be released on September 7th, 2020 on the following platforms:
Virgin / iTUNES / Amazon / Xbox / PlayStation / Microsoft
