indiescifi451.com Has it ever happened to you to spend days while you are trying to get a certain information or a document? The office rats send you from one office to another ("Sure, ask my colleague from room 867 on the 16th floor"), you spend hours on the phone, then from one building to the opposite side of town ("Yes, we are open on Tuesday from 16.00 till 18.00 and on Thursday from 10.00 till 12.00"), and days pass and you feel being sucked in some insane surreal bureaucratic vortex. I experienced it more than once and - while I hope it didn't happen do you - I bet you went through this too.For a low budget sci-fi flick it does a smart move - the film captures you straight from the first frames due to a very unusual texture - sinister camera angles, eerie close-ups and noir-like lightning aren't just guests here. You're their guest.The colour solutions of "Version 1.0" remind me of an amazing robot horror movie by Richard Stanley, "Hardware" with its dominant dirty yellow and red shades. By the way, if you loved that robot horror dystopian film, you'd definitely enjoy "Version 1.0". The monotone decay atmosphere is present in both.The cast deserves a special mention. Jeremy Sisto and Deborah Unger in the main roles were perfect, not some outstanding performances, but the film's secondary characters really gave it a particular savour. Lance Henriksen (Bishop in "Aliens", Alien 3"), Bruce Payne ("Passenger 57", "Necronomicon"), Udo Kier (secondary roles in "Suspiria", "Blade", "Armageddon", "Dogville", "Grindhouse") - all these guys are amazing character actors, but I particularly loved Lance Henriksen's role as basement dwelling bum. "Version 1.0" is a hypnotizing surreal cyberpunk brilliantly portraying monotone paranoid decay, woven of many elements like Dadaism, Kafka, Lynch, Cronenberg, noir, surrealism, consumerism, corporations, depression, sex addictions and, finally, turns up to be a very satisfying science fiction. I would love to watch it again and it's the best compliment a movie can receive. For any science fiction fan I'd surely say it's a must-see.

Efenstor The film is often compared to Darren Aronofsky's "Pi" and it's actually similarly intelligent and visually creative, yet "Pi" is more consistent and logical. So what we have great about "1.0"? First and foremost is its message, which is very relevant for the consumer society of today; the very discovery of that message while watching the movie is a rather exciting thing, yet it's a common thing for intelligent movies; but that's not the point, the point is that "1.0" warns you about living to consume products, the corporations will never care much about you, they only want money, more and sooner. That's why they would never care much even about debugging the programs they put into their consumers. Of course, this movie is a sci-fi because I think it's virtually impossible to create a virus for the human brain, even with some kind of microscopic electronic "mites". But doesn't, say, propaganda sounds like someone's trying to put a mind virus into your brain, to make it possess your will and so to control it? Or weren't communism and fascism a real kind of mind plague striking billions of people? May be then even there are demons who possess people and make them do things they wouldn't like to, and they are actually mind viruses, thoughts that have an ability to transmit themselves using verbal channels? We should learn to watch attempts to control our will and to resist them, or we won't be human anymore just like those poor people in this amazing movie. 7 out of 10, because the pace of the story is yet too sluggish and the visuals are overly grotesque which I don't really like, here "Pi" did better.

mario_c This film is an amazing dark thriller that is greatly filmed in a noir-style type. The settings are always dark, mysterious and full of a surrealist ambiance that grabs you in suspense since the beginning until the end of the movie. The plot, which is extremely confusing, is passed in a near future, where almost everything is similar to the present except the nanotechnology, which is more advanced… I love the kind of cinematography which is presented in this movie: the mysterious characters, the dark settings, the strange and confusing plot, the surreal ambiences, those camera shots from the most bizarre angles… However, in this particular case, I didn't appreciate very much its ending (which I will not spoil), maybe because I was expecting some kind of different disclosure. It doesn't mean the end is bad, not at all, but I was expecting something else… Just because of that I will score this movie as 9/10 and not the 10/10 I was thinking I would give it when I was watching the movie… Anyway, it's an excellent movie made in some Sci-Fi and surreal standards that shows us a possible scenario to the future, when the technology and the informatics systems will mess (even more!) with our brains!

electravenus Maybe just another conspiracy theory movie, this one is particularly special, because would be the first one to deal with publicity and marketing issues. I study communication and the theories the movie presents are no crazier or more neurotic than Baudrillard's, who is considered one of the communication post-modernist masters. Brainwashing is an old topic? Perhaps, but having the possibility of giving wings to our own doubts on how much visual propaganda and subliminal ads lead us, is quite interesting. Maybe it is not so surreal if you really go beyond the lack of story and holes in the plot. Catch the overview criticism the movies makes and we'll realize the facts which the film brings are not that impossible, or they won't exist only in the future. Minimize and rationalize their paranoia, get the symbolisms and metaphors and maybe the movie is based on the real media. Interesting movie. Don't take it literally though, otherwise it will obviously be another paranoia movie and nothing else.