Lapsis

The genres mingle in writer/director Noah Hutton's lo-fi futuristic drama, which eventually morphs into a detective thriller with political overtones. Dean Imperial plays Ray, an underpaid delivery driver with a sick brother, who buys a black market employee ID card that allows him to work out in the wilds, cabling together a network of quantum computers. It's dog-eat-dog, labour-intensive work, with Ray up against robot cablers that can get his pay docked even if he's done the work. As the focus shifts from Ray's fish-out-of-water struggles to the true nature of his false employee name, Lapsis Beeftech, the film reveals itself as a sharp satire on the gig economy and its corporate overlords. Hutton's world-building is convincing, and there's a lovely 1980s flavour to the film's boxy hardware, rickety robots and 8-bit computer graphics. Certain moments don't quite work, but the ideas in play feel prescient, and the low-budget workarounds deserve a round of applause.