User Reviews

What worked: Concept, plot was decent at many points as there were often new things happening.

What didn't work: Acting, pacing at many times, the ending dragged on and went nowhere.

It just does not deserve top marks. On the other hand, it's a decent movie that does keep you entertained for a bit over an hour minus quite a few scenes. It does keep going for too long. And the acting is extremely stiff. Basically it wanders all over the place going nowhere.

The concept was clever. Going in and out of the dream world is a super interesting idea that is used in amazing movies like Inception. The "does she dream or not?" is a silly idea though unless you make it well. Because basically it takes you out of the movie. If any scene can be a dream and there is absolutely no logic to it, well then what scenes am I supposed to focus on and what scenes don't matter? This movie does suffer from that effect quite a bit. It's hard to avoid though, and with writers that are not from the top shelf this is not something you just can solve with an easy rewrite. You basically are solving a problem that exists just to ruin a plot. Make it interesting at all times!

The acting was just terrible overall. Not really acceptable in 2017 where great actors are found on every street corner. There are much better lead actresses out there. I know she is very attractive, but she is playing a genius here. Her being attractive or not doesn't matter at all to the plot. Please do a better casting job! Also, the director was just not good. While the actors were flat and emotionless they didn't have many emotion filled scenes to act out here. I know how this goes. A screenwriter sits down and writes something he feels is amazing and deep. I myself feel that about all my work initially. Then a director, who is not a writer, is in over the writting and agrees. They film it and discover that it's not really that deep. It feels very intelligent on paper, but the film reveals quite a few plot holes. But they probably didn't focus on jokes at all because it was supposed to be an Oscar winner. At least add a few jokes, funny scenes or action scenes. Something to bring energy into this emotional drain. Unless you know for a fact the screenplay is amazing you are supposed to add fun to it. Hell, do that anyhow!

Mostly the non-fun factor here comes from the lead actress being cold all throughout the movie. There is zero emotional range here and as she is shown in all scenes the movie really feels boring 25% of the time.

There are a lot of scenes where we just see her walk in or out of glass doors. I get that the director wants to illustrate that she is walking in or out of the hospital, her own apartment building, her work. But when all buildings and doors look the same it's just another boring white wall hallway scene. At least make her live in a house, or make the hospital clearly a hospital. Basically it all feels like she is teleporting all over the place to boring locations. We have a 1 minute scene at the hospital. Then a 1 minute scene at her work. Then a 1 minute scene at the hospital again. Then again a 1 minute scene at... you get the point. And she always just shows the same single emotion in all scenes: depression. She just wanders about. Her life seems so damn boring that it's incredible she somehow finds the will to work. Also, the bad writing shows itself in her dialogue lines. She is supposed to be a programmer genius, but all her lines go like this "We can wake up from coma íf we just try hard enough." That's not genius. That's just a basic teenage girl talking. The writer should have looked up at least some programmer or psychology terms. I never once felt like she was intelligent. I myself need to look up terms all the time when I write. You are not supposed to know this. Just make sure it works at the end.

I'm a huge sucker for sci-fi movies. So of course I did enjoy this overall. But it's just too boring for me to rewatch now that I know the plot. The plot also is not even that good. The ending feels rushed even though the movie feels 20 minutes too long. I didn't even quite understand what this movie was trying to show or tell me. It felt like any scene could appear at any point. There were no clear theme to be found here. This would need a rewrite and a recasting. But one or the other could make it a movie worth recommending. There are much better small budget sci-fi movies out there that feel better written and acted. It's worth watching if you adore sci-fi. But if you skip it you won't really miss much at all.

Too predictable, and it fell for the overused simple plot: Evil partner wants to make money on another's work. Could have presented better ethical dilemmas or even finished a full story, but instead it became lost in imaginary worlds and fear of technology. I'm guessing the funding for the movie ran out and they just dumped what they had on us. But, the acting was good, and main character likable.

The beautiful Ren (is that supposed to be a name?) works at some company where she developed a "software" in liquid form that when put into a person's eye allows him to experience something for several hours or so, an experience that in real life only takes place during a minute or so. The company and it's product are called OtherLife because the plan is to offer people to experience their dreams. But financially the company isn't doing well, just as the release of the product will be in 5 days.

Ren has a brother in a coma and she's "treating" him with the eye drops hoping we will snap out of it somehow by making him relive the same day of the accident over and over. At some point his eye twitches. Her father though is ready to pull the plug on the brother.

One day, Ren's patient boyfriend finally gets to spend some time with her. She gives him an eye drop where he experiences some snowboarding. He grabs another vial hoping to relive the experience but instead grabs a vial meant for Ren's brother so this guy ends up dead. That allows Ren's partner Sam to get some investment from a jail company. The idea is to put people away in virtual OtherLife jails for years when in reality they are only "in jail" for a minute. And Ren is the first one to undergo this virtual conviction. She's sentenced to a year. Her cell has a wall made up of LEDs showing the day number. When 365 hits, Ren is ready to get out, but the counter tuns again to "1." Ren, desperate, manages to escape, only to find out she hasn't been in the lab but in some actual single cell room out somewhere. She escape the security people and meets up with a friend. She ends up making some interesting discoveries and will have to find a way to return OtherLife to its original purpose of improving people's lives.

OtherLife features the lovely Jessica De Gouw and has an intriguing premise that it manages to work out more or less satisfyingly. The whole jail bit didn't really fit into and wasn't suited for the movie. But as many sci-fi movies of late, it offers so much more than the usual tired old storylines of other genres.

This film felt engaging up until the 1 hr mark. They establish some interesting ideas (mostly borrowed from Black Mirror) and feature some interesting visuals (mostly borrowed from the Matrix, Inception and even Requiem for a Dream).

It looks and plays very well for a low budget film for a while, but at 1hr mark it looks like they just gave up. The film would've easily topped my sci-fi list if it had a powerful ending (or at least a tolerable one). But it just stops. The main lead just gives up all her strong motivation because (I guess) she understood that her brother made his conscious choice and he wants her to let him go or something, I'm not sure about this since it got a little confusing at some point.

Most of the supporting cast has nothing to do in the film and that's a shame. I really wish they would play a bigger role in the story. Also, this would've been great to see the slightly altered versions of them while inside otherlife, just a slight change in the acting. Just make everything a little off.

Anyway, Otherlife is still a good low-budget sci-fi, what it needs is a more powerful or at least a little less convoluted ending. They could've even kept the ending they've done, but deliver it in a visually more comprehensible way.