“Vessel” is playing July 28, 5:35 PM at the J.A. De Seve Theatre.
Directed by Adam Ciancio, who also wrote the screenplay, Vessel is a science fiction movie that examines the human cost of being the protagonist in a shared universe.
Okay, the plot. Ash (played by Marc Diaco) has been receiving messages from aliens, directly into his mind, since he was a young child. He has been mandated to pass on the messages he receives to a government handler, in secret, and then go on with his life. But the years of this otherworldly task have taken their toll on Ash, and he’s beginning to feel himself slip away. He’s blacking out, he’s lost his sense of taste, and now he’s losing his ability to feel emotions. At what point does does his life outweigh his humanity? Ash now has to decide what to do, and try and chase down the last hope of saving himself before it’s too late.
That’s the short of it, without getting to spoiler-y.
Okay, a few things about this movie before getting you too excited about it. It is a character study. Ash is in every scene of the movie, and you’re going to watch him wrestle with his issues for the whole of the movie. The movie is very deliberately paced, and it takes all the time it needs to get where it’s going. The acting in the movie is dramatic, serious, and grabs that one emotional chord and hits it again and again in a driving dirge of angst and worry.
Despite all of this, and because of all this, it was a great film.
Ash comes across perfectly as a man who may be carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, or may have just lost his mind. The acting by Diaco is so pitch-perfect that he keeps the viewer walking that line with him from start to finish. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
