2 out of 5

Director: Jared Drake

I loathed the first 40 minutes of this film. It was slightly redeemed by what followed. If youre going to make a distopic film, you can go obvious with it but play your cards straight (such as Equilibrium) or you can dig deep and try to find your own niche. But if you do not have an original or at least entertaining way of telling that story, then why bother? Visioneers is about Zach Galifianakis, Level 3 Visioneer for the Jeffers corporation, which is the largest and most successful corporation ever. Even the president endorses it! The company is huge and probably taking over the world. Within the first few moments we see that everything is regimented and dull-colored and an announcer tells how many potentially productive minutes are left in the work week. Alas, all is not gold, as people in the world are apparently exploding. Whats one of the symptoms of someone who might explode? THEY DREAM. Do you get the subtext yet? Its idiotic . Which wouldnt be a problem in itself, except that the director and writer dont seem to show any scope for the billions of films and books that have echoed these themes before. Its presented in this quirky manner that makes it seem like were supposed to be moved by all of this insanity, a clever parody on the working world, but it just comes across as ignorant and bland. As the film progresses, Zach starts to worry he will explode, and this forms the narrative crux for the rest of the film. The direction it takes is not interesting or surprising, but as mentioned, I notched the film up one star because the movie calms down on all of the indie movie random wackiness at this point and starts to toss out some potentially interesting thoughts. Unfortunately these dont develop into anything, but it at least kept me hoping through the rest of the movie, instead of loathing as I did at the start. And the music is pretty.