Sundance 2021 Film Review: A Glitch in the Matrix
Simulation theory deserves a great documentary, but A Glitch in the Matrix isn’t it
Our Sundance coverage continues with a review for Rodney Ascher’s documentary on simulation theory. A film that amplifies all of Ascher’s most grating tendencies as a documentarian, A Glitch in the Matrix takes the tedious navel-gazing of Room 237 - Ascher’s cult account on hidden meanings within Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining - and cranks it up to eleven. Largely ignoring a storied bibliography of research, philosophy, and the logical complexities on the subject of simulation theory, A Glitch in the Matrix instead finds satisfaction in a glib slinging of memes and crackpot theories. Minor spoilers ahead…
In 2012, filmmaker Rodney Ascher’s Room 237 hit the festival circuit. A documentary detailing the swirling theories and symbolism behind Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, the film peeled back the curtains on the beloved horror masterpiece to mixed results - most effective when explaining the Overlook’s impossible architecture or the film’s hidden mythology, most frustrating when it devolved into a parade of navel-gazing conspiracy theories. Did Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing? Was The Shining allegory for the Holocaust? With his removed perspective and purposefully conflicting footage, it’s clear that Ascher doesn’t subscribe to many of Room 237’s “that’s-a-stretch” notions, but the amount the film dedicated to its crackpot cinephiles was at least a little tiresome.
Fast forward to 2021, and Ascher’s new documentary, A Glitch in the Matrix, extrapolates its predecessor’s worst tendencies. Where Room 237’s jumble of talking heads theorizing about Theseus, minotaurs, and Native American genocide were at least nominally enlightening (even if wrong), the same can’t be said about this examination of simulation theory. Where Ascher’s approach is mostly palatable for a treatise on a two-and-half hour long horror classic, it works much less efficiently in the face of a hypothesis with roots stretching all the way back to Descartes, Zhuangzi, and Plato.
“A Glitch in the Matrix takes the tedious navel-gazing of Room 237 - Ascher’s cult account on hidden meanings within Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining - and cranks it up to eleven.”
The oldest recognizable iteration of simulation theory - the proposal that reality could just be a computer simulation à la The Matrix - can be traced back to the allegory of Plato’s Cave. Modern versions of the hypothesis were championed by vanguards of sci-fi, including Phillip K. Dick, who found posthumous fame in his works and a 1977 lecture - referenced in Glitch on multiple occasions - that questioned the nature of consciousness and suggested the existence of our simulated reality. There’s a trove of philosophy, science, and commentary surrounding this far-fetched conspiracy, but you wouldn’t know it from watching A Glitch in the Matrix. Content to bombard us with a smattering of rambling randos plucked from the Internet, Ascher once again presents us with the navel-gazing that hamstrung Room 237, this time with the talking heads represented as CGI avatars.
Granted, A Glitch in the Matrix is a visually amusing documentary, inserting clips from relevant memes, scenes from the Wachowski’s The Matrix, and trippy graphics - but without the substance to back it up, it gets exhausting quickly. If Glitch isn’t willing to explore the origins or the hypothetical science behind simulation theory, then the only natural course remaining for the film is a study of the fringe of people who are subsumed by delusion. Even here, the film can’t muster a robust exploration: There’s a fascinating angle here to explore how devout believers of simulation theory live (or don’t live) their lives, but Ascher is too distracted by theatrics. Case in point, the documentary’s big stunt comes in the form a subject who fully believes that he is living in the Matrix, having seen the sci-fi actioner over 100 times and going so far as to buy a trench coat like the one featured in the film. Only later is it revealed that this individual is Joshua Cooke, the man who murdered his parents after becoming obsessed with the idea that the Matrix is real. It’s a profoundly heartbreaking reveal, but Ascher also unearths other details about Cooke including abuse, bullying, and undiagnosed mental illness - enough to make us question why Cooke was brought into the documentary in the first place.
Simulation theory is endlessly fascinating, but A Glitch in the Matrix never threads the needle of the gray space between textual analysis and speculation, nor does it paint compelling portraiture of its subjects. Glib and shallow, it’s a half-baked documentary fiddling with CGI toys and hyper-focused on a cacophony of ramblings. By the end, you’ll be just like Cypher in The Matrix: “Oh why, oh why didn’t I take the blue pill?”
