EIFF: The Anomaly, Review

As soon as ‘The Anomaly’ starts rolling you are engaged. The terrified screams of a young old boy seeing his mother shot play out over the opening titles, and you’re straight into the action as Noel Clarke’s Ryan wakes up in the back of a moving van. The last thing he remembers is being in a rehabilitation centre for posttraumatic stress.

Ryan only has 9 minutes 47 second cycles of consciousness to work out what is going on and to be reunited with Alex. The 9 minute cycles give this film a fast pace from the outset jumping from futuristic London to New York, Shanghai and Brazil.

It’s hard to describe the rest of the plot without chucking in some major spoilers but fair to say I really enjoyed this film.

Noel isn’t just the lead actor in this film but was also its director, a task that must have been tough jumping in and out of character. I don’t think that shows, the fight scenes are brilliantly choreographed to be ‘single shot’ speaking to Noel earlier this week he explained that even some of the sets were built specifically for the pre planned fights.

You don’t get to see much of Brian Cox’s sinister ‘Dr. Langham’ but when you do he’s a cold calculating character who you find out doesn’t even have that much closeness to his own son Harkin (Ian Somerhalder). Harkin is the most visible ‘bad guy’ in is film very much Ryan’s physical equal (Infact it’s pretty rare for Ryan to WIN a fight)

People looking for a good Sci Fi at this years Edinburgh International Film Festival should look no further. ‘The Anomaly’ is showing at EIFF on the 20th of June and will be on general release from the 4th of July. www.edfilmfest.org.uk