A Glitch in the Matrix (2021)

        ROOM 237 director Rodney Ascher's latest documentary gets a Blu-ray and DVD release from Dogwoof after previously coming out on digital.

As well as the aforementioned look at the various crackpot theories that surround Stanley Kubrick's 1980 THE SHINING, Mr Ascher has also given us feature-length non-fiction pieces on sleep paralysis (2015's THE NIGHTMARE), and the lead singer of The Mentors (2019's THE EL DUCE TAPES). This time round he's looking at simulation theory - the idea that the world in which we live isn't actually real and may instead by the creation of some other intelligence. 

Ascher begins the film with video footage of acclaimed SF writer Philip K Dick addressing an audience in 1977. We see Dick, the author of The Man in the High Castle, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, and a host of other fine novels that frequently deal with the themes of alternate realities, talk about how he himself believes they exist and that his experiences following general anaesthesia, when he woke up with fragmented memories of living in a different world to our own, have informed his fiction.

The documentary also include an interview with philosopher Nick Bostrom, founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University and author of a number of academic articles, notably 2003's Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? 

Unfortunately, much of the rest of A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX consists of interviews with a number of digitally disguised individuals with no perceived qualifications at all whose theories seem to be based on them having spent rather too much time playing video games. A lengthy amount of time is given to a man who murdered his parents under the impression he was in an artificial reality having watched 1999's THE MATRIX to excess. It makes for quite grim listening and adds very little to the subject and this plus the video gamers does cause the documentary to stray into ROOM 237 crackpot territory. 

        Dogwoof's Blu-ray comes with a trailer and a 35 minute Q&A conducted over Zoom. You also get a very attractive set of collector's postcards.

        Simulation theory is a fascinating subject and if you don't know anything about it A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX provides a good introduction and it will get you thinking. But ultimately it could have been better.

Rodney Ascher's A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX is out from Dogwoof Films on Monday 10th May 2021 and is already out on Digital HD