I stumbled on this movie on a streaming service and found it intriguing, though with some flaws. Without giving away too many spoilers, it's about Carly Pope's character Sara Novak becoming obsessed with a riddle game combined with a sort of treasure hunt, where riddles written in blue paint lead to some sort of "design" that explains everything. She's a university student in Toronto - a real Toronto, not the ersatz one that subs in for Chicago or New York in other films shot in Canada because of lower costs - though this film is a New Zealand-Canada co-production, with the interiors presumably shot in New Zealand.
It's a very low-key drama with pretensions to telling its audience the meaning of life. It was interesting to see a more analogue version of Toronto (and apparently Hamilton's McMaster University) from about 20 years ago - the grimy subway without digital billboards, a university lecture with overhead projectors and students writing in notebooks, a comics-video shop where Adrian Paul's Vern works full of VHS tapes - it seems like another world, even though it's only a flyspeck away in time.
The main mystery is a bit wonky, and too often the characters stumble into things that a wiser person would avoid, though on the other hand the tricky riddles are solved a bit two easily for my taste. It has a certain intelligence.
Ian McShane is the best thing in the movie in the role of Pope's father; Adrian Paul struggles with a flat American accent, though is suitably enigmatic; Jay Baruchel provides some mild comedic relief as a creepy fellow student who is after Sara; while Rena Owen has a small role as a disturbed killer just out of jail. All in all, a slow burn, suitable for a quiet Sunday night if you have nothing pressing to do.
It's a very low-key drama with pretensions to telling its audience the meaning of life. It was interesting to see a more analogue version of Toronto (and apparently Hamilton's McMaster University) from about 20 years ago - the grimy subway without digital billboards, a university lecture with overhead projectors and students writing in notebooks, a comics-video shop where Adrian Paul's Vern works full of VHS tapes - it seems like another world, even though it's only a flyspeck away in time.
The main mystery is a bit wonky, and too often the characters stumble into things that a wiser person would avoid, though on the other hand the tricky riddles are solved a bit two easily for my taste. It has a certain intelligence.
Ian McShane is the best thing in the movie in the role of Pope's father; Adrian Paul struggles with a flat American accent, though is suitably enigmatic; Jay Baruchel provides some mild comedic relief as a creepy fellow student who is after Sara; while Rena Owen has a small role as a disturbed killer just out of jail. All in all, a slow burn, suitable for a quiet Sunday night if you have nothing pressing to do.