3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Fix

2024, Kelsey Egan (Glasshouse) -- download

South Africa, the near future, a dystopian world future where the air is toxic and millions are dying every year. Most people wear masks with filters but some have access to a wonder-drug AIRemedy which gives them a tolerance to the toxins. The corpo that makes it, Aethera, stockpiles it for the rich but is also scrambling to find synthetic ways to make more, because a key resource in its production is running out. Meanwhile another mysterious insurgency is working towards something else, hopefully for the betterment of all mankind.

Enter Ella (Grace Van Dien, Stranger Things), a model and actress, spoiled and bitter about how her world is not real. She doesn't trust anyone, doesn't really love anyone, and when she catches her boyfriend with her best friend, she quickly drinks down the new drug he stole from a street lab, to spite them. That was a mistake.

The drug begins to change her, alter her. Meanwhile Aethera is hunting her down, the authorities are hunting her down and the original drug creator is hunting her down. She's afraid of what's happening to her and angry at everyone. Eventually she has to trust someone, so why not the insurgency and their drug creating scientist who only wants to do right by the world. But not before she is altered in ways she can never return from, a bug-like human hybrid that was meant to become the new source for AIRemedy's key resource -- dragonfly blood? It didn't strike me that this goal was any less exploitative than Aethera's stockpiling, and one can easily imagine a world where the human-bug hybrids are farmed. But the movie doesn't go there, just saddles us with the boring reveal and let's Ella escape.

Egan's been in the movie making business for quite a while, dancing around in all areas, including stunt work and various production roles. You can see she knows how a movie is put together, but I am not sure its given her any true vision. But there is time for that. This movie looks and feels very indie but lacks any definitive edges to make the dystopian scifi stand out in anyway.