Mark Reviews Movies: ULTRASOUND

Ultrasound, Magnet Releasing

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | March 10, 2022

Things aren't quite right with the world or the characters at the start of Ultrasound, and the first significant question of the movie is why that's the case. There's a tantalizing sense of mystery to much of this story, penned by first-time screenwriter Conor Stechschulte, but after a while, we figure out that the mystery—its foundation and the ways in which it can continue—isn't just the focus of this tale. It's the only purpose the movie possesses.

We first meet Glen (Vincent Kartheiser), an ordinary guy, driving home from a friend's wedding on a dark and stormy night. He gets a flat tire on the road (We know the cause before he does, adding a layer of tension to the scene that follows), so Glen seeks some help at a nearby house.

The rest of the scene plays like some half-remembered dirty joke of sorts, as Art (Bob Stephenson) and his wife Cyndi (Chelsea Lopez) invite the traveler into their home, treat him as a most welcome guest, and invite him to spend the night. Art even offers Glen the master bedroom. Sure, his wife is already sleeping in there, but Glen would be doing everyone a favor if he had sex with Cyndi. We keep waiting for the punch line, for sure, and that sense of expectations left hanging certainly concentrates the story's focus to a certain degree.

A lot of it, though, becomes a collection of odd events, additional setups, and plenty of open questions that aren't answered until the last act—or even the final minutes—of the story. Art arrives at Glen's apartment a couple months after their chance meeting. Cyndi, as it turns out, is pregnant, and her husband insists that's on account of Glen. He denies it, but after arranging a meeting with Cyndi, Glen is convinced—if not of him being the father, then of there being some deeper connection between the two of them.

Other details here include a couple of enigmatic men, who are keeping tabs on Glen and spying on the conversations in his apartment, and a politician named Alex (Chris Gartin), who's running on a conservative platform but has convinced his mistress Katie (Rainey Qualley) to move closer to him. There's also Shannon (Breeda Wool), a scientist working in a top-secret facility and for a program run by Dr. Conners (Tunde Adebimpe), who believes she's helping those in need, but the truth is much different.

At a certain point, Glen, now paralyzed from the waist down and in a wheelchair, and Cyndi, who is no longer pregnant, end up as patients/subjects of that program. Meanwhile, Art seems directly or indirectly connected to all of this in some form or fashion.

The general conceit of the plot, which gradually reveals what Art has done—and continues to do—and the goals of the experiment in the facility, is intriguing, bringing up hypnotism, elements of personal corruption and institutional conspiracy, and more potentially potent ideas about perception and free will. Maintaining some degree of engagement is the no-frills aesthetic (lots of sterile or plain spaces and outdated technology) created by director Rob Schoeder, making his feature debut, and the performances reflect that low-key design. Kartheiser and Lopez make for sympathetic victims of power and systems beyond their understanding, and Stephenson is creepily bland as a master manipulator.

The scheme of that plot, though, is entirely about gamesmanship, as characters conceal their true intentions or just the general truth and betray each other. Since our main protagonists are under the influence of some sinister force that prevents them from seeing things as they really are, the movie constantly plays with the audience's comprehension of reality. Shannon at least serves a role in bringing some of the actual truth to the surface, but the whole subplot with the hypocritical politician and his lover feels like a clichéd dig, as well as an unnerving counterpoint to Cyndi's real or only imagined pregnancy.

For all of the eerie atmosphere that Schroeder brings to the material, the continual rug-pulling becomes, not only repetitive, but also a bit too predictable. If one is fooled often enough, the act of fooling becomes the expectation, not the exception, after all. Without much in the way of these characters or the underlying themes of this twisting and turning tale, our attention is almost exclusively on the filmmakers' methods of trickery, and with those tricks serving as the primary reason for the story to exist, the whole affair has little to say about its various ideas. As long as it keeps trying to fool us, that's the only thing about which the filmmakers seem to care.

The mystery of Ultrasound unfolds with a certain level of skill, in terms of both how things are revealed and when they are. Once the pieces of the filmmakers' puzzle come together, though, we're left wondering what it has to say and why it matters, beyond its existence as a semi-neat puzzle.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products