Latency: As professional gamer Hana, a striking opponent of profound agoraphobia, starts to appreciate and fantasize about the brand new hardware that stimulates her game in a visual way, she does not know whether the hardware is gratifying her with power, or it is making her submissively obey.
James Croke’s AI-centric film, Latency, depicts AI in the most frightful light, as a true villain. This new technology that is being discussed in the Latency film is a revolutionary device that can essentially learn how a person’s neuron pulses over time. By training this device on someone, it can enable them to respond quicker in an online multiplayer battlefield.
However, in a time where PC competitive online gaming is already riddled with cheat code mods, why would companies even pursue making such a device or how wouldn’t the situation balance itself out as more gamers buy these devices in order to play properly? Or do game manufacturers and players consider the device too much of a shortcut to be acceptable anyway?
Some of this is touched upon since professional gamer Hana who is suffering from extreme anxiety in the real world and yet trying to cope with her loss has received an advertisement/testing unit of the device intended to be used in latency film. As it happens, Jo is once again correct when she says that the backlash from a top streamer is the death knell for any product, but some negative comments from a “also-ran” will not do anything.
After going through an extended process of surveying dishes while synchronizing the body, which entails exercises involving fingers, mouse movements, and even physical pain, Hana begins to think that. She can join in on those tournament matches that she is usually terrified of entering because of her skill disadvantage and easily win them taking all the money home, as well as pay off some other landlord debts built up, among other things.
Latency contains elements of horror as well as a thriller which means that Hana apart from trying to forge ahead with her life begins to have visions of traumatic events that relate to the loss of her parents in her childhood. This dark entity also tries to attack Jen and succeeds to keep Hana inside the house when it is time to leave this house that is too much of a digital representation of a physical space.
All the standard elements are in place: a soft voice for the machine user, cheesy horror imagery designed to provide a succession of cheap scares, an effort to make the audience think of what is real, and finally the shocking13 the whole point is that what Hana has been doing in the four walls is not living. There are also times when the plot seems to look down upon gaming culture as if it is the sole reason for Hana’s stagnation. This is offset by a number of blanket of sentiments regarding video games (like question mark blocks from Super Mario) when displayed are quite refreshing.
Through the exploration of a story not entirely sure of what point it is trying to argue, Latency does not really strike fear or get the viewer engrossed even after making numerous attempts to sway Hanna and the audience’s perception of reality. Even the main one appeal of a device that helps a player in a competitive multiplayer session tremendously is not even sufficiently exploited, and it turns out to be simply watching Sasha Luss rotating around the gaming chair and shooting people using a mind control. That is without even mentioning a few obligatory scenes with imaginary swirls and shots of CGI monsters created from thin air.
The entire concept is encouraging and has an appealing urgency, especially in today’s world whereby the society at large seems oblivious to the threats posed by AI, however, Latency suffers from an execution that is plagued with bugs and a convoluted mess.
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