Sundance Film Festival 2021: reviews, analysis, and more – The Verge

In 2021, the Sundance Film Festival found art in Zoom, Instagram, and VR theater

2021-02-15T10:29:47-05:00

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In a Sundance Film Festival defined by the coronavirus pandemic, the New Frontier section - devoted to experimental projects like virtual reality films and interactive performance art - was also radically reimagined. The section is often one of Sundance's most intensely physical experiences; in 2020, it included a series of VR films viewed while floating in a swimming pool. In 2021, during an entirely remote festival, it pushed for something different: making our own homes feel otherworldly.

Pared down to 14 projects, this year's New Frontier focused on web art and social media alongside virtual and augmented reality experiences. The result …

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The pandemic was inescapable at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival

2021-02-03T12:09:56-05:00

These Days. | Photo: Sundance Institute

For the first time since its inception, this year's iteration of the Sundance Film Festival wasn't held in picturesque Park City, Utah. Due to the ongoing pandemic, the showcase turned into a virtual event. Promising directors were still on hand to showcase their work, but viewers were able to watch them from the comfort of their living rooms. It wasn't just the way films were presented that changed, though. The pandemic also impacted how many of these movies were made and what they're about.

The shift is most obvious in films that are explicitly about the pandemic, of which there are several. For instance, These Days is a pilot episode tha …

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A Glitch in the Matrix is quirky, creepy, and way too unreal

2021-02-02T10:32:36-05:00

In February 2003, a 19-year-old named Joshua Cooke shot his parents to death in their Virginia home. Cooke told his lawyers that he believed he was living in the Matrix, a simulated universe outlined in the 1999 Keanu Reeves blockbuster of the same name. Cooke pleaded guilty, and the defense was never used. But years later, he still offers a chilling, painful account of the moment he realized that killing another human being felt nothing like an action movie.

This is arguably a spoiler for A Glitch in the Matrix, a new documentary about the simulation hypothesis - the idea that our reality is actually artificial. But it's key to explaining …

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The Pink Cloud is an eerily prescient sci-fi movie about being stuck in quarantine

2021-02-02T09:05:53-05:00

The Pink Cloud. | Photo: Sundance Institute.

Like most recent events, the 2021 edition of the Sundance Film Festival has shifted from an in-person showcase to a virtual one. Despite the change, we'll still be bringing you reviews on the most interesting experiences we find, from indie films to VR experiments.

The Pink Cloud starts with a message that underlines the distressing ludicrousness of where we are: it's a movie about people stuck in a never-ending quarantine because of a deadly threat outside their doors. It's also an early prescient one, as it was written in 2017 and filmed in 2019. It has no purposeful connections to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it's impossible not to draw pa …

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Cryptozoo’s stunning animation isn’t enough to save it from a meandering story

2021-02-01T12:19:04-05:00

Cryptozoo. | Photo: Sundance Institute.

Halfway through Cryptozoo, a hypnotizing and beautiful animated film about classic cryptid creatures, the somewhat meandering story becomes apparent. And it's distracting.

Dash Shaw's latest feature takes place in a fictional world where cryptids - mythical creatures like the kraken, Loch Ness monster, and Bigfoot - are feared and hunted by humans. In an effort to try to protec …

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Prisoners of the Ghostland is destined to be the next Nic Cage cult movie

2021-02-01T11:20:06-05:00

Prisoners of the Ghostland. | Photo. Sundance Institute.

Like most recent events, the 2021 edition of the Sundance Film Festival has shifted from an in-person showcase to a virtual one. Despite the change, we'll still be bringing you reviews and insight on the most interesting experiences we find, from indie films to VR experiments.

Prisoners of the Ghostland seems like a movie made for Nicolas Cage. It's the English language debut from prolific Japanese director Sion Sono - Western audiences might know him best from the strange and gruesome series Tokyo Vampire Hotel on Amazon Prime Video - and it mashes together elements of Westerns, samurai films, and post-apocalyptic action movies. Cage's gen …

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Censor finds eerie horror in an ‘80s moral panic

2021-02-01T10:22:35-05:00

Like most recent events, the 2021 edition of the Sundance Film Festival has shifted from an in-person showcase to a virtual one. Despite the change, we'll still be bringing you reviews and insight on the most interesting experiences we find, from indie films to VR experiments.

Censorship is the bane of artists, but it's also a grudging compliment - because being a devoted censor requires believing that art has power. That belief is the dark heart of Censor, a horror film about the horror film world's most infamous moral panic.

Censor, which premieres at the Sundance Film Festival this week, is the feature debut from Welsh director Prano Ba …

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