What if your current lesson in school were about altering reality? What if it came with pop quizzes that could turn you into a toaster, or if skipping homework could actually get you killed? In writer/director Nathaniel Peters’ SCP Academy: Part 001 – The Containment Breach, our students are about to learn the hard way that survival is the final grade that counts.
Hoping to follow in her late father’s footsteps, Cadet Aliyah Manning (Ashley Figueroa) is late for her first week of classes in the SCP Foundation’s Reality Mechanics Division. She sneaks in to find Dr. Gibraltar (Alan Stanford), aka Dr. G, about to demonstrate the results of an important experiment to fellow first-years: Blackwood (Jordan Beltz), Dennison (Ryan Bergman), Mandela (Victor Gariseb), and Mathis (Katie Rotz). Then there’s Elroy (Andy Zibrotski), the one guy lurking in the shadows who doesn’t quite look like the other students… meaning he’s older.
Dr. G shows off his newest toy, the Mobile Semantic Reality Ballast, a device he and Manning’s father, Bernard, helped design. When Bernard went missing, Dr. G’s research was set back several years. But now it’s time. Applied to the wrist, the device uses the power of the mind to snap reality back into place. Slap it on, press the button, and Bob’s your uncle. Dr. G straps it onto Aliyah’s arm just as his phone rings, and he needs to step out for a moment. Taking the opportunity, Aliyah’s classmates egg her on to use the device, but she initially refuses. Instead, Dennison grabs it, uses it himself, and pays for it in blood… his own.
Blackwood wears a gas mask during a reality-warping containment breach in SCP Academy.
“He needs four brave volunteers to walk out into the breach with him, and one by one, the cadets fall in line like they’re under a spell.”
Then the Keter alarms go off. Something is happening at the Foundation. Safety procedures say to barricade the door and stay put, but Dr. G stumbles back in with other plans. He needs four brave volunteers to walk out into the breach with him, and one by one, the cadets fall in line like they’re under a spell. Aliyah is the only one who knows what’s really going on with Dr. G and the device. With the whole facility locked down, her classmates turned against her, and the Plague Doctor roaming the halls hunting for “the Pestilence,” Aliyah is about to find out if she’s really her father’s daughter. Good thing she did the reading.
As the title suggests, SCP Academy: Part 001 – The Containment Breach is the first installment in an ongoing series about a group of students uncovering the mystery and conspiracy behind the academy. In this universe, science has already uncovered every secret of the tangible world, and now experts are moving on to bending reality itself.
The first thing that strikes me about SCP Academy is that, like many indie productions, it’s working with a small budget. Here, though, you’d rarely know it. We’ve got a fully fleshed-out set, decent costumes and uniforms, and clever use of CG effects. Nathaniel Peters and team aren’t just making a sci-fi series; they’re pushing their own filmmaking limits.
As a story, the reality conundrum requires a little brain work, but there’s plenty of sci-fi action to get you to the next episode. Dark Math Films is currently fundraising for Part 2, so check out Part 1 to see if SCP Academy has what it takes to move forward.
For screening information, visit the SCP Academy: Part 001 – The Containment Breach official website.
"…pop quizzes that could turn you into a toaster…"
