"It is the beginning of the end!" — nope, it's not a quote from writer/director Alex Garland's latest cerebral sci-fi, but me, crying in frustration as to the reasons why this sensory extravaganza wasn't released on the big screen outside of North America and China.
Paramount, in all their "we've got cold feet" wisdom has handed the release over to Netflix, thus signalling the beginning of the silver-screen apocalypse and the inexorable transition of new releases to an exclusive small screen market.
Garland will be screaming blue murder when he sees bus bound hoards watching his work of art on five-inch phones and a pair of junky earbuds. Shame on you Paramount.
Okay, now I've got that off my chest, I can turn my attention to the film at hand, because it's really good. Garland's first film, Ex Machina, was the kind of debut that made many critics sit up and pay attention.
In that film, Garland (who also wrote the screenplay) explored the sinister side of artificial intelligence and proceeded to gouge out the male gaze with a white-hot poker of female vengeance ... an oddly liberating experience. Here, in his sophomore outing, Garland continues to keep things female-centric, with a predominantly female cast.