A Glitch in the Matrix Documentary Is More “Oh” Than “Whoa”
What if we all live inside a simulation? If you’re Neo, you might reply with “Whoa.” If you’re anyone that’s played a videogame in the last 20 years or, say, lived through a quarantine by transitioning from screen to screen, you might remain relatively unfazed compared to Keanu Reeves’ sci-fi chosen one. A Glitch in the Matrix, from director/editor Rodney Ascher, considers simulation theory—the long-running genre playground and thought experiment—using a handful of zealots and a slew of pop cultural pulls, following the rabbit hole through its history from Greek philosophers to wannabe stoner iconoclasts. The long-winded documentary is engrossing in spurts and isn’t particularly interested in convincing us of anything, but it’ll at least serve as the jumping-off point for a strange conversation or two.
That latter strength is Ascher’s bread and butter: Ascher’s done harrowing docs before (The Nightmare) and straight-up horror (a segment of ABCs of Death 2), but A Glitch in the Matrix is most like his Room 237. That doc allows a bunch of obsessives—ranging from convincing analysts to straight-up crackpots—to unpack their theories about Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining in full force. It’s absurd, engaging and ultimately makes you want to look at one of the best horror movies ever made with a magnifying glass. A Glitch in the Matrix never inspires that level of curiosity with its existential musings.
Hung on a talk given by Philip K. Dick about a weirdo drug-fueled vision he once had, the doc’s split into chapters attempting to explain that “we’re really in The Matrix” idea. Dick’s talk eventually leads into his modern-day compatriots, who do their damnedest to explain their shared, yet different, existential crises. They all sound like people trying to convey the perception-altering aftereffects of an acid trip, just induced either by rigorous self-examination or sensory deprivation chambers. Or repeat viewings of The Matrix, of course.
These talking heads are morphed into VRChat-esque avatars, like a shiny polygonal swordsman or a robotic Anubis, which provides charming bits of deadpan humor and visual interest to what are essentially just Zoom calls. Then there are the animated segments of their experiences (either untextured videogame models or uncannily fleshy reenactments) and the low-res environmental tours extrapolated from a dreamy version of Google Earth. It’s all meant to be uncanny and off-putting in a particularly digital way, but mostly captures a kind of muddiness—still in a particularly digital way, though. This is all to say it’s not much to look at aside from its sci-fi film clips or archival footage, though digging through them provides just as much insight as its interviews.
Like its subjects, A Glitch in the Matrix is immersed in and inseparable from pop culture. Animation, videogames, mythology, sci-fi—you name it, the film uses it to clearly draw a link between the stories in the prevailing mediums of the day and an unerring sense that our experiences of the world are, in some way, false. Now, however, the literary musings of Dick and Neal Stephenson have been taken up as conspiracy theories, mixed in with the particular brand of Extremely Online bullshit from Elon Musk and his ilk. At one point we’re shown a Twitter exchange between the SpaceX founder and the official brand account of Rick and Morty. Those that didn’t sign up for The Joe Rogan Experience might find themselves wondering what they ever did to slight Ascher.