Transient

Without any notice, the magician suddenly rises out of the crowd and starts pulling wonders out of thin air. The magician’s name is Chris Ruppert, who wrote and directed the spellbinding sci-fi horror feature Transient. Tech wizard David Blakely (Greg Poppa) is driving home in the rain with his wife Claire (Sugey Cruz), heading home from a company party. Their lovely little girl, Laura (Lillian Ruppert), is asleep in the back seat.

There is a horrible fatal accident, and we flash jump ahead a year, with David waking up alone and grieving. He hasn’t been in the office of the company he co-founded with Bill (Eric Francis Melaragni) in a long time, as he is walled up in his house feverishly working on a secret project. When David hits a wall, he reaches out to Bill at work, who asks his secretary Shareese (Kenishia Green) to cancel the rest of his meetings that day. Bill finds that David looks like s**t but is intrigued by what he has come up with.

David is trying to digitally recreate and store memories, ones that can be relieved by wearing a head apparatus. With this invention, David can finally be back with his family again, but he can’t get past the memory limitations of storing memories. By putting their heads together, Bill and David crack the code and are successfully able to codify and immerse themselves in their memories. However, Bill starts noticing sinister figures in the corner of his eye. And alone in his house, David hears his dead daughter Laura calling out to him…

There are all sorts of movie magic, with many spells being very expensive to cast. However, there is no magic as powerful as that pure indie magic that conjures up a great big something out of a whole lot of nothing. I am talking about that deep well of low-budget trickery that showmen from Corman to Sayles drew from back in the day. With Transient, Ruppert reaches out to mundane existence and molds it into something truly fantastic, all without visible expense.

“David is trying to digitally recreate and store memories, ones that can be relieved by wearing a head apparatus.”

How does he do it? Don’t ask stupid questions. He’s the magician. As Jack Logan says, believe in magic or go home. But if we really wanted to figure it out, we would start with his brilliant script. Ruppert delivers some hard sci-fi in the setup, coming much harder than you see in bigger sci-fi productions. It is dense and technical enough to really floor you until you realize the helmet that plays The Memories has blinking lights on it and that you are watching a movie. Then it starts skewing from Brainstorm style tech play to dipping horror, at first in the manner of Flatliners but with a much darker take.

Then suddenly, Ruppert kicks in a dramatic series of twists that go galloping into Alex Garland’s levels of smart speculative darkness. My skin is still crawling hours after viewing Transient like it is trying to get back into the movie. Ruppert’s script is only one of the elements being thrown into this witch cauldron. There is the excellent cinematography by AJ Nutter, who embellishes the magnificent visual compositions with adventures in distorted soft focus.

Then there is the high-end production design, compliments of Cruz with the assistance of Karen Crafton. The intricate decorations throb with production value, sending shivers of class down your spine. You also need to admire how deft Ruppert’s hand is as an editor, as he can dance with the razor with the best of them. Hovering over the entire picture like an incoming monsoon is the outstanding musical score by Ruppert. It is omnipresent in its dourness and is exceptionally eerie.

Transient is the kind of low-budget powerhouse that stands out like a radioactive beacon, rather like Upgrade did a few years ago. There ain’t no magic like the indie movie magic found here. I am now expecting further nightshade greats from this particular wizard for years to come.