Starts off with a long, boring philosophical soliloquy by Anthony Hopkins. Once that tedium is over the movie begins and gains a little traction with 5 people being summoned to a critical conference call, each taking it from their home. We learn that they are being asked to sign off on finalizing a highly secret and scary futuristic machine. With that little bit of interesting dilemma, the movie showed promise. But it goes downhill in nearly every respect. Featuring Anthony Hopkins, I figured it had to be good. Five loosely connected individuals all of whom had a close relationship with a tech genius (Hopkins) who recently died. Quickly we learn that they are brought together to provide the go-ahead of a cutting edge device that can lead to teleportation. The project poses risks to the continued survival of the Earth. But it's not clear if turning it on fully or not will be the trigger for a cataclysmic doomsday. Meanwhile there are strange happenings during the call and we suspect there is a 6th menacing participant. The whole movie occurs as part of a few one-on-one video calls and the majority of the movie takes place on a video conference and the audience gets views of covert texting or calling discretely between participants on the video . This novel style is the only "edge" of interest. The movie never really pulls together, and the cutting edge secret project is barely discussed. It does wrap up, but it makes little sense. Not only does the main conference call gets old fast, but the side communications often add no value whatsoever. The sets are idiotic. Even though each person was among the closest business associate with the dead top 5 tech billionaire, they all appear (except for the son that moved into the billionaire home) to have homes that are nice but not "high end." It's as if while the billionaire makes a $100+ million a year,, his closest righthands make a few hundred thousand.a year. Not likely!
Review of Zero Contact
