Review: 'Anon'

When it comes to movies, one Netflix specialty is the small-scale science fiction movie. Look around the service and you'll find lots of examples of films with interesting little ideas often don't quite work.

Andrew Niccol's latest film falls into this category, as it's built around a "Black Mirror" type of idea: imagine a world in where your consciousness is recorded, like video, and uploaded to the ether. As you look around, little pop-up windows identify every person you see, every object you glance at. And there is no privacy. It's not just that the police and government can see your every move. Friends and family can access your recordings, making even the simplest sins like adultery nearly impossible to pull off.

Clive Owen plays Sal Frieland, a sad-but-sharply-dressing police detective who spends most of his days solving crimes simply by looking at a few recordings. It's a predictable and somewhat boring job until someone begins murdering people and then deleting the recordings of their death. Some hacker is apparently killing their customers and Sal quickly zeroes in on the mysterious "Anon" (played by Amanda Seyfried). She not only has no identity, she's off the grid other than when she takes a high-end job erasing the digital records of someone's mistakes.

While it's a compelling premise, the movie quickly devolves into a gloomy and monochromatic future film noir with a string of predictable tropes. Sal is haunted by the death of his young son, who died in his care. He decides the only way to trap Anon is to go undercover and lure her in with a job to wipe his memory. But of course, they end up in bed. And then there's the twist as the identity of the true killer is revealed. Etc, etc.

"Anon" is a great concept with an unfortunately lackluster execution. It's the essence of a "B" movie - one of those films that are interesting enough to stream, but you wouldn't be happy if you'd paid to see it.