SNAPSHOT
Co-directed by filmmakers Caroline Labrèche and Steeve Léonard, Radius is about a guy who wakes up from an accident with no memory and an unfortunate power: if anyone ventures too close to him, they die instantly. (synopsis (c) Gizmodo)
With the current deluge of superhero films showing no signs of abating, audiences have become well used to people from diverse walks of life being gifted with all kinds of extraordinary power.
Spiderman? Once good old Pete Parker, now web-slinger extraordinaire. The Atom (Ray Palmer) inherited the ability to change his size after some experiments with matter compression. And The Fantastic Four? One trip to space and they’re nothing like the people they once were.
But the protagonist in Radius, played with trademark taciturn vulnerability by Diego Klattenhoff (Homeland, The Blacklist, Pacific Rim), has no such luck – though to be fair, none of the aforementioned superheroes were quite sure what to do with their powers at first either; still at least they were mortally wounding to anyone around them so there’s that – ending up with a shellshocked memory and a field around him that kills anyone who gets too close.
It’s frightening, horrifically disorienting, and comes with all manner of nightmarish implications.
According to Gizmodo, “the buzz from festival screenings hasn’t been great” but it’s such a clever, out there premise with kinds of existentially angsty implications, that you really hope everyone who saw it was just having a really bad day.
Not as bad as the Radius guy, of course but then honestly, who is?
Radius has so far screened at Fantasia Film Festival (Canada), Horror Channel FrightFest (UK) and Fantastic Fest (USA); no mainstream release details are currently available.