Drones—they’re
not just for delivering Amazon packages anymore. They can also kill people Scanners-style. That is what you call a practical
application. Unfortunately, a slow, lingering death seems to be a common side
effect among farmers who adopted drone technology. When she isn’t killing
people, a euthanasia specialist will try to get to the bottom of the mystery in
Matt Osterman’s Hover (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in New York.
Claudia
and her partner John are busier than ever dispatching clients in their district.
Their latest case work was especially difficult, because she just discovered
the boss made her pregnant and he is dealing with the very early stages of a
fatal illness. Of course, that gives the conspirators a perfect cover story
when they fake his suicide to prevent him blowing the whistle on their
arrangement.
Somehow
the nonprofit and euphemistically named Transitions is in league with the drone
company. Claudia will start to put the pieces together herself with the help of
some rural conspiracy cranks and a dissident maintenance worker at the drone
company.
Yes,
that’s right, Hover combines two
super-fun topics: euthanasia and agriculture. Hello! Is anyone still reading
this? Arguably, Hover essentially reworks
the premise of Michael Crichton’s Runaway,
but what was cautionary speculation in 1984 is basically old news in 2018.
Still,
Osterman invests the film with a moody vibe that mostly works for it, but screenwriter
Cleopatra Coleman struggles to carry the film as its weak lead. On the other hand,
Craig muMs Grant is worth remembering for future casting thanks to the smart
and intense presence he shows as John. Not surprisingly, Beth Grant is
convincingly nutty as the tinfoil hat wearing Joanna, while Dré Starks is a
real standout as Victor Smith, the paranoid and anti-social son of a Transitions
client. Plus, it is fun to see horror movie regular Fabianne Therese appear as
Claudia’s duplicitous assistant, Tania.
You
have to give Osterman and Coleman credit for their thoughtful and complex
treatment of euthanasia. This is not an advocacy film by any stretch. It might
even damper some viewers’ enthusiasm for the practice. It also avoids most of
the dystopian clichés, setting the film in a world nearly indistinguishable
from our own. Still, a little bit a future world building would have made the
visuals more interesting. The resulting film is well-meaning, but probably
already too late. Not very compelling, unless you are a diehard drone-phobe, Hover opens this Friday (6/29) in New
York, at the Cinema Village.
