PopHorror Let's Get Scared
From Sergey Lukyanenko, the mind that created the dazzling novels, Night Watch and Day Watch, comes a new sci-fi thriller directed by Sergey Mokritsky (Battle for Sevastopoi 2018) called A Rough Draft. It stars Nikita Volkov (Dance To Death 2017), Severija Janusauskaite (Unburied 2018), Vilen Babichev (Beyond the Edge 2018), Olga Borovskaya (Chernovik 2018), and Oleg Feoktistov (The Lone Gunmen 2001).
Synopsis:
A video game designer is stripped of his identity and recruited by a mysterious force to be the gatekeeper of a multi-dimensional portal.
Kirill (Volkev) is an ordinary guy working as a video game designer… until the day he discovers that everyone he knows has forgotten who he is. He is sent to be a gatekeeper of a tower – the portals between parallel worlds/alternate versions of Moscow. But Kirill is unique. He’s able to tear open different portals better than anyone else has before him. Those supervising Kirill want him to open a portal to Arkan, a Utopian world that no one has been able to get into but is important because it can be used as “a rough draft” to help repair their existing world.
I was very excited going into A Rough Draft since the movie is based on the eponymous novel by Sergey Lukyanenko, who wrote two other great books: Night Watch and Day Watch. On the positive side, it was a visually beautiful film, with gorgeous slow-motion fights and playful visual effects. I especially loved the scenes with floating Matryoshka dolls that double as flying gun machines.
I don’t mind movies with a complex plot, but the story in A Rough Draft is a total mess. It took nearly the entire film to sort out what was going on. To make matters worse, the action took its sweet time getting going and didn’t actually start moving until about an hour in. I’ll be honest, by then, I’d mostly lost interest.
Let’s also touch on something else I can’t stand: THEY DUBBED THIS FILM. WHY? No really. Why did they dub A Rough Draft? The film dies the instant a character opens their mouth and a terrible, clearly-not-theirs voice comes out. Why does everyone assume that people in the English speaking market are too stupid for subtitles?
Thanks to the dubbing, it’s impossible for me to comment on the acting. Add onto that the complete lack of a coherent ending, and you have a slow, beautiful but badly dubbed mess. I feel like there are some great ideas in here, but there’s too much material for just one film. I’m hoping that a subtitled version will be released at some point. If that happens, I’ll reassess my opinion on this film.
As it stands, A Rough Draft is a little too rough for me to recommend.
