Director Matthew Simpson’s Disremember is a psychological thriller about what happens when a man’s mind becomes his biggest enemy. It is a story about memory, or more specifically, the pieces of it that go missing when the truth is too painful to recall.
Rob (Matthew Simpson) is a former soldier turned struggling alcoholic whose days have blurred into a cycle of heavy drinking and lost time. On the night of his birthday, he finds a birthday card from his wife, and inside, she asks for a divorce. Everything after reading that card goes dark. Rob finds himself in the apartment of his ex-military friend Jack, with no memory of how he got there and no way to piece together the missing hours. He leaves himself notes. He stares at the walls. He is a man trying to remember a life that keeps slipping through his fingers.
Frightened by the blackouts and unwilling to confront Janine, Rob reaches out for help by chatting with an online therapist specializing in military mental health. On his therapist’s advice, he starts keeping a journal, documenting everything he can recall in the moments leading up to each episode. But the entries only highlight the gaps — fragments of memory that never quite add up. Rob blacks out again, and this time he wakes up finding notes written to himself. Desperate for answers, Rob activates the existing CCTV cameras inside Jack’s apartment, setting them up to record whatever happens to him during the blackouts.
“He is a man trying to remember a life that keeps slipping through his fingers.”
What is unique about Disremember is that the film was produced by only one person, UK filmmaker Matthew Simpson. He did everything from writing and directing to production, shooting, and editing, and I assume he worked full-time simultaneously.
Disremember will remind you a lot of Christopher Nolan’s Memento, as we peer into Rob’s fractured memory and never see what happens when Rob blacks out… not until later. The film’s themes of trauma, addiction, and identity are baked into the plot, where Rob’s heavy drinking causes him to black out, and unbeknownst to him, he is living a double life. That’s all I’ll say.
Gimmicks aside, Disremember is a well-thought-out psychological thriller. It walks us down a fairly typical path as Rob deals with the breakup of his marriage and finds comfort in drinking, before taking us on a 90-degree turn. The fact that Matthew Simpson did everything is the icing on the cake. If I were doing this, I’d take every shortcut imaginable…I am sure he had to have a three- to five-person crew… the final product is just that good.
I’m still thinking about Disremember long after it ended, and it has nothing to do with the fact that Matthew Simpson made it entirely on his own. It is a genuinely well-crafted psychological thriller with a story strong enough to carry the weight, and the one-man production is just a bonus.
For screening information, visit the Disremember official website.
"…still thinking about Disremember long after it ended..."
