"Quadrant" (2024)

by Joseph Perry and Mike Imboden

In our “The Good, the Bad, and the Verdict” film reviews, Joseph and Mike give their thoughts on a slice of cinema. For this installment, it’s Quadrant, by Charles Band, which is the first picture from Full Moon Features’ production label Pulp Noir.

Synopsis

Developed by scientists Harry (Rickard Claeson) and Meg (Emma Reinagel), the Quadrant helmet allows your mind to transport you into a world where all your phobias and nightmares are real, while also granting you the strength to defeat them, liberating you from their control forever. But the Quadrant experiment is about to go terribly wrong.

The Good

Joseph: Quadrant contains some good ideas, including the headset that engages users in a sort of immersion therapy to get their fears under control. Shannon Helene Barnes gives a wild, all-in performance as Erin, a young woman obsessed with Jack the Ripper who exploits the Quadrant to realize her dark fantasies rather than for its original use. Fear-fare viewers who prefer their movies with varying degrees of female nudity and displays of sapphic desire will have little to complain about, quantity-wise.

Mike: The concept behind Quadrant is pretty cool; a VR/AI headset that allows you to face — and overcome — your greatest fears. The design of the Quadrant helmet results in a cool looking steampunk-meets-VR type of headset.

The acting isn’t great, but Shannon Helene Barnes manages to bring her psychotic character to life more so than anyone else manages to and it’s a treat to watch her spiral downwards as she succumbs to her murderous urges.

There’s also an ample amount of nudity, if that’s an important aspect of a film for any viewers.

The Bad

Joseph: The proceedings feel rushed; for example, Erin seems to master the Quadrant after only a few sessions, while fellow user and eventual lover Robert (Christian Carrigan) is still struggling after a year of therapy with it. My main knock on the film is its use of AI. Besides the ethical issues regarding using AI instead of actual artists — including budgetary reasons — the scenes using this technology looked to me less like an uncanny valley effect and more like a cheap (as in inexpensive, to be clear) video game in its planning stages.

Mike: Watching a Full Moon movie doesn’t result in the viewer thinking that they’re getting Oscar-caliber acting, so Quadrant delivers about what you’d expect, to varying degrees of average.

The science behind the whole ‘Quadrant’ technology doesn’t make much sense and nothing is ever really explained to any degree. To accept things and suspend disbelief we need to have some basis on which to approach them, and with zero to work with it all just seems a bit too “fakey”.

The biggest problem with this film is its heavy reliance on AI-generated imagery which is used for the realms in which the Quadrant users traverse. I get that a very limited budget precludes an army of artists creating digital playpens, but the slippery slope of AI-generated anything is a slap in the face of hard working artists who have put in the blood, sweat and tears of creating what Full Moon nonchalantly tosses onto the screen.

The Verdict

Joseph: Viewers who are familiar with Full Moon movies have a pretty decent idea of what to expect here quality-wise, although this first entry under the company’s new Pulp Noir umbrella offers a bit more serious, darker take on things. Fans of B-movie mad science and techno-fear science fiction might want to give Quadrant a go. Those opposed to using AI instead of human talent will most likely want to pass, though viewers interested in the possibilities of AI in filmmaking — and there are many — will want to take a look.

Mike: Quadrant builds itself around a very interesting concept and mainly succeeds despite some sub-par acting from most everyone involved (Barnes aside, as her ‘Erin’ is the highlight of the film). The biggest - and deathblow dealing - negative here is the use of AI imagery to create the worlds within Quadrant and their inhabitants. While the ever-so-slight jittery look of the imagery adds to the dreamscape-esque look and feel, the fact that it’s AI-generated kills any goodwill it might have for me. Throw all the talk of budget at me you want, the fact remains that there are actual people out there who create these kinds of images for a living and instead putting it in the hands and artificial “brain” of a computer cheapens the product and insults everyone who built up the skill to do it for real.