Mark Kermode

So, Kane Parsons had said, in an interview that I had read before, that the feature would be in direct continuity with the web series, meaning that if you knew the web series, there's loads of Easter eggs for the web series, but the feature wouldn't contradict the web series.

Crucially, however, if you don't, and I didn't when I saw this, I've seen stuff now, but I didn't know about it beforehand.

The film works completely as a standalone venture.

And the reason that it does is because the narrative discovers the rooms from the point of view of Clark, of Chiwetel Ejiofor's character, who knows nothing about what he stumbled into.

and who is completely baffled, as indeed is Mary.

So both the leads act all the way through like they have never seen any of this before, which is the experience that I had as a viewer.

Although the screening that I saw, I was in a room with loads of people who obviously knew the series beforehand.

Apparently, on the series, they used 3D software.

They used Blender and Adobe After Effects to create the world.

For the film, it has been reported that they built over 30,000 square feet of back rooms, and the set was so long and so big that it was possible to actually get lost in it.

I don't know what the truth of that is.

What I can tell you is that as a viewer, you do absolutely get lost in this world, which has this kind of David Lynch-y, nightmarish...

Logic.

This is a shadow world.

It's the kind of place that you encounter.

If you ever have the, we all have weird dreams.

I quite regularly have dreams about being in a version of my house, which isn't quite my house.

And I can't, I'm in the loft and I can't get out of your house, your loft that you can't get out of.

And rooms that are like upside down and staircases that just go down, down, down, down, down, but you can't see where they go to.

So plaudits to the two lead actors for their utterly convincing WTF reactions to what's going on in the discovery of this alternate world.