Wes Ellis’s Neuro is a brilliant homage to 1970s filmmaking. It captures the clinical, Orwellian nature of THX 1138 and adds a dash of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in a concoction that this reviewer wishes had run the full feature length.
Playing out, in part, like an orientation video from back in the day, Neuro introduces us to newlyweds Julie (Samantha Robinson) and Peter (John Valley). We encounter them as they are about to consummate their elopement when Peter finds himself the victim of a mysterious seizure. This incident stains the new couple’s relationship so badly that Julie seeks solace in a memory enhancement and erasure procedure provided by a company called, you guessed it, Neuro.
Samantha Robinson stars as Julie in Wes Ellis’s sci-fi short Neuro.
“Peter finds himself the victim of a mysterious seizure.”
Peter wants nothing more than to make his wife happy and so listens along to how safe and simply the operation will be, thanks to the velveteen and super-sales agent tones of Dr Mellechamp (Van Quattro). But just as the procedure is about to begin, Peter suffers another seizure. This interruption in the process sends Peter down a dark tunnel, where the secrets hidden behind the corporate smiles of Neuro await.
Erik Gatling’s photography, accompanying Ellis’s direction with Nathan Bracher’s editing, infuses Neuro with enough style, ambition, and period majesty. It feels like some impeccable lost or deleted scene from when Michael Crichton made a picture like Westworld and Coma. Quattro is excellent is the Machiavellian figurehead of this memory manipulation organization, playing the figurehead with the right amount of saint and sinister rolled into one.
Indeed, the only negative this reviewer can find in this impressive piece of short-form cinema is that it is short. There is so much intrigue as the narrative plot turns mount up, taking something that appears on the surface simple and plunging it, directly and deliciously, head-first into the diabolical. Wes Ellis, please expand. The subject is crying out for it. Encore, more Neuro!
"…with enough style, ambition and period majesty."
