“We fix brains here,” explains the enthusiastic tech assistant to his only-here-for-money volunteer subject, being wired-up in a makeshift desert lab. Moments later, he’s given a copy of the insides of his cranium ‘in digital form’ that’s been captured on a new experimental device called the Noggin. The aim is to treat degenerative memory loss by reinstating earlier snapshots of a patient’s brain. Yet the maverick lead researcher is frustrated that the process is unstable, and that the person’s consciousness and memories soon revert to their old patterns.
Such scientific challenges are made worse by the dysfunctional relationship between the doctor and his son (who’s also the incredulous test subject). The pair have never addressed the recriminations that followed a close family bereavement. Might the effort to cure memory loss through the ‘surrogate loading’ of saved brain signatures into different bodies also allow this father and son to better empathise with each other’s misunderstood choices?
Cerebrum sets out its high-concept premise within the first few minutes of screen-time – and the filmmakers deserve to win an award for the “best use of a Slinky for exposition purposes” in the process. But rather than make the most of the ‘mind-swap’ malarky, writer-director Avri Ragu adds in elements of a whodunnit, a theft caper and a father-son fallout to over-complicate matters. The result is an unfocused film that, at its two-hour run time, is easily thirty minutes too long.
The movie pivots around the character of Tom Davis (Christian James), who’s forced to return home from the city to work for his estranged father. But Ragu’s script does little to sketch out Tom’s personality before circumstances compel him to accept the brain patterns of other people and ‘become them’ for a short while. James does a reasonable job in the acting stakes, but the impact is lessened because his “own” character is so thinly drawn to begin with. He’s not helped by Ragu’s credibility-busting conceit that Tom is able to become a world class brain researcher when the plot demands it. The best performance in the film by far is James Russo as the gruff and only slightly-mad scientist Kirk Davis. But his character ends up being underused.
The desert locations are striking enough, but the cinematography of Cerebrum does little to evoke a sense of place. The way that the film is shot is unnecessarily flat and, the way it appears on screen, the action could be set anywhere. The only real visual interest comes from the flickering memory collages that accompany the brain import process.
A well-executed final showdown brings some overdue clarity, before an irritating coda muddies the picture once again. Cerebrum is a film about the importance of memory. But its makers appear to have forgotten that less can, in fact, be a great deal more.
Release Date: Out Now (US)
