Mark Reviews Movies: ZONE 414

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 2, 2021

Zone 414 doesn't just wear its influences on its sleeve. The influences make up the cloth of screenwriter Bryan Edward Hill and director Andrew Baird's movie.

Here, we're introduced to a world of the future, where humans and androids, built for all sorts of tasks and pleasures, co-exist. Well, they do, at least, in one area of a city, called Zone 414. "It has all of the grime and none of the crime," the android and zone's creator tells the retired cop, who's about to investigate a mystery in the area.

The guy certainly sells the place honestly. It's a rather underwhelming locale, made up of industrial lofts, cramped spaces, and abandoned warehouses, decorated with the occasional strip of neon lighting. Basically, Zone 414 looks pretty much as we'd expect from science-fiction production that's trying keep within its budget restraints. Come for the dank locations, but stay for the stray mood lighting that makes it all look vaguely futuristic.

The good news is that Baird doesn't need this place to look too appealing or to feel too expensive, because the core of this tale is a series of mysteries. The first, which makes up most of the question-and-answer plot, involves a missing girl, who has run away to Zone 414 in order to escape the torment of being the daughter of a wealthy but nebulously creepy business tycoon. The father is the man who invents androids and makes a fortune exploiting them in that human-and-android-integrated neighborhood, for the sensual and sick thrills of other rich people.

The other mystery involves the nature of these androids. Are they real, in any human sense of the notion? Do they have independent thoughts, feelings, and hopes and dreams (There's at least no talk of electric sheep here, lest the movie's major influence be far too obvious)? Are they actually being exploited, or are they just lifelike replicas and tools of pleasure—whatever kind of pleasure a human with means may desire?

Hill's script does seem to care about these questions and, to some degree, the ramifications of the possibility that at least one android is closer to being more "real" than a machine. Those are the mysteries that really should matter here, since the basic plot is so routine and the backdrop of this futuristic world is so cheaply realized. The movie, though, mostly evades any real conversation about or examination of these ideas, leaving them to riddles, aphorisms, and other mostly meaningless word games.

The retired cop, now a private investigator, is David Carmichael (Guy Pearce), who's introduced in a scene in which he shoots a pleading android without asking any questions or showing any remorse. This, for inexplicable reasons, is the man for the job Marlon Veidt (Travis Fimmel), the creator of the androids, needs done.

His daughter has disappeared. He suspects she has run away to Zone 414, trying to hide among the androids there. David needs to find her and bring her home, and as for the test of killing an android, that seems more a thematic requirement, since David eventually sees one android as more than a disposable machine, than a plot one (These androids, after all, are programmed to be harmless and are worth a lot more to Marlon functioning than destroyed).

Jane (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) is the more-human-than-machine android in question. She might know where the daughter is, since the girl seemed to take a liking to this android in the past. Jane currently works as a sort of escort in the zone, fulfilling people's various desires, while hoping that one of her customers will decide to buy her and take her away from this life. When David finally meets up with Jane, he asks her to help him find the girl, and she will, if David agrees to help her find a man who has been sending her death threats.

The rest of the plot, of course, has the two following various leads, questioning people who might know about the girl, and getting closer to the truth. It's routine and predictable, and the more intriguing scenes have to do with Jane's contradictory nature (She is programmed to both want a life of her own and be tied to taking orders) and the question of an android's actual worth. Two scenes—one with Royale (Olwen Fouéré), who arranges Jane's client meetings, and the other with Marlon's brother Joseph (Jonathan Aris)—start the debate but never get beyond roundabout statements, which sound substantial but don't actually say anything.

In general, Zone 414 doesn't have much to say itself, which might have been fine if the plot and the movie's world weren't so generic. They are, though, meaning the movie has nothing novel to show or tell us.

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