Review: Absolute Denial

Ryan Braund, the writer and director of Absolute Denial, created something that makes you think. I sat at my desk, trying to figure out exactly where this story went. I’m a huge fan of mindfucks, and this movie was fantastic. Let’s talk about it.

The basic premise of Absolute Denial is the story of a man who designs a super computer who is designed to out perform the human mind. Spoiler: it works. Spoiler number two: it goes horribly wrong. There was a slow burn showing the main character’s (David) determination to make this work and stay on the right track, deteriorate to absolute madness.

This deterioration was perfect. You don’t know when David’s psychosis took over for his life. This all culminated in a climax that just put the entire story into a neat little bundle. Absolute Denial focuses around the coding David put into his computer’s self learning program, called “absolute denial protocol.” Once this is brought up, David’s psyche shatters, and the movie fast tracks to the climax. The ending is worth the hour and ten minutes to get to it.

The story was beautiful, but what I want to bring special mention to is the audio. The voice acting for David was impeccable. Nick Eriksen was loud and clear. His voice track was probably the best produced I’ve heard from an independent movie. That said, Jeremy J. Smith-Sebasto’s voice for Al voice has just enough distortion on it to show that it’s supposed to be artificial. The voice tracks for Amy, Max, and Jerry were spot on for shitty cell phone audio. The audio design was just god damn amazing.

The animation is so different from what you’d expect. What we got was a fairly basic character design for David, and the set pieces were not detailed at all. They didn’t need to be. The focus is on the character of David. His all white body is front and center on every single one of sets. From his home, to the warehouse Al is stored at. The grain added to the story adds a level of dirt and grime that lends itself to the neglect that David was showing to himself since starting this project.

Absolute Denial was fucking great. Media like this, where I know next to nothing about it, is phenomenal for me to jump into. When the boss man messages me with “do this review because it has Pantheon/Matrix vibes,” I’m in, and I was taken away with the design choices. The audio hit differently, and the artistic direction was so different from what you see from most of the animation world nowadays. We need more of these types of movies. We don’t need overly produced audio, over the top animation, or an overly convoluted story. And Absolute Denial proved it.