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DVD Life Tracker
 Rating: 5.0 Genres: Sci-Fi Director: Joe McClean Writers: Joe McClean Stars: Matt Dallas, Rebecca Marshall, Barry Finnegan |
| Storyline Dillon stumbles on a little known news story about a company called Life Tracker Limited, which claims it has discovered a way to predict biological events in a human’s life by looking at their DNA. Everyone views the story as a modern day form of palm reading that will go nowhere, but Dillon keeps turning on his camera when he finds articles on the Internet or hears about it on the news. The story keeps getting bigger. People all over the world are paying tons of money to see if their DNA shows any trace of disease, or future children, or when they’ll die. With little to no resources, Dillon is left to guerilla style street interviews and filming the reactions of his small group of friends. When Dillon, his best friend Scott, and Scott’s girlfriend Bell all get their futures predicted their lives start to change… along with the world itself. Nothing is physically changed in any single person’s day-to-day life, but the ideas that have been put in people’s heads convince them to flip… Written by Joe McClean |
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| Details: Country: USA Release Date: 9 March 2013 (USA) |
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DVD Life Tracker
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This movie was quite dry, and very self defacing for the first 15 minutes or so at least. You have to get past that, and it is difficult because of the painfully bland character you experience first, and the way no one ever seems to treat him very nicely is not easy to watch either. However all of that is there for a reason it would appear. You need to feel really bad for this guy just so that when things get to the ultimate fun of the movie, which is when they get the first readings back from a licensed Life Tracker reader.
Once the first reads begin you start to understand that this movie is more than a 1 camera piece of bad steady cam crap,(because they continually upgrade equipment as the movie is made) but rather a much deeper story, that had to start out broke, because you have to have somewhere to call a bottom if you are ever going to make it to the top right? So I don't want to spoil the fun of this story for anyone, I just want you to know that getting through the first half of the movie will pay off for you with an original story, and some very good acting as the protagonists each learn new things they had not been expecting.
Honestly I am not sure if the casting selections were the best, but I think that the Director did get the best performances from each of the actors, even if I personally would have gone with a different line up.
You will enjoy this movie though, that I can say for certain, you will start to care about people who at the start of the film seem like the type of people you would not want to know, but fate, and time do as they must.
Enjoy, and be well.
Spoiler Alert. . .
Enjoy the movie by watching first if you don't want to learn about scenes and events of the movie.
Cinema Verite style has been used to give bad movies an edge but this movie is a modest success.
The budget must have been minuscule and there are some continuity problems but for a modest budget POV kind of movie. This sort of works.
The Belfast clock and the World clock were confusing at the beginning especially since the whole movie was shot in LA. But it holds together in a strange kind of way as the movie unfolds.
The Uriel Patterson actor overacted the creepiness factor and I think he would have been better served by playing the role straight. I have a feeling his "narrative" role was added as an afterthought. The "cowboy" leader of Lifetracker was a costume knockoff of LRH and there are some initial games being played with character/real life people but it's a minor inconvenience and probably one that is unavoidable given the nature of the subject matter.
Movie-making like this should be encouraged. The comparisons to Scientology methods and the nature of personal prediction tied disparate elements together nicely. The twist that Belfast didn't disintegrate on DDay and the subsequent world day destruction was a nice surprise and really unexpected. The writer/director shows that you can make a thoughtful movie full of ideas and social situations without CGI, big named actors and a huge budget. In fact, it seems that the larger the budget, the less intellectual the movie and that is sad. I would like to see this director get a bigger budget and see if he can stretch his legs a little.
Overall the acting was TV quality but that's not the director's problem. It is ours. By elevating reality TV "stars" to the same level as legitimate actors, we have lessened what we expect from the craft of acting. It's too bad but a sign of the times I guess.
Ever since I was a little kid, I've always been fascinated by science fiction films that involve the
known reality that we all live and breathe in today. From CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND to CHILDREN OF MEN, looking at an alternate reality of the present or near future has always fascinated me and the big question of "What if?". For that reason, LIFE TRACKER had a big impact on me because not only did it move me but it also made me ponder the philosophical questions of "Would I want to know when I die?" or "Would mankind benefit from something like this?". LIFE TRACKER is a story which takes place during the present where one man's dream and scientific study combined have unlocked our DNA code and given us the ability to see into our future and what it possibly holds for us. Questions of what diseases we might contract, injuries, who we'll have our children with, when we'll die and many more are answered through these DNA "prints".
There's another incredible science fiction film that released all the way back in 1997 that you all might remember called GATTACA starring Ethan Hawke and Jude Law which was about a dystopian future where our DNA dictates how our lives will progress, what jobs we'll be fit for, what we'll most likely die of, etc. Our DNA was even alterable in the story to remove any faults but the main antagonist of the story was born naturally and defied the system to achieve his dream of space flight. This privilege was reserved only for the most elite of human specimens. The reason I bring this film up is because I almost see LIFE TRACKER as an amazing prequel story to GATTACA or an alternate and more real-life take on the subject of our own DNA affecting how we live and the decisions we make. Watching these two one after another would be an amazing experience that I'm sure I'll be doing pretty soon.
The story of LIFE TRACKER is told in a documentary style where our lead character Dillon Smith (Barry Finnegan) is attempting to make a change in his life by creating a documentary in California that chronicles the birth and development of Life Tracker Limited who supply the prints to citizens based on their DNA and personal information submitted. Dillon isn't very sure of himself at first because he's left so many things unfinished in his life but his strength and drive comes from close friends that he lives in an apartment complex with. The story for the most part focuses on Dillon, his friend Scott Orenhauser (Matt Dallas) and Scott's girlfriend Bell Osbourne as we watch their relationship go through many hurdles as the documentary filming progresses. This for me was a very powerful aspect of LIFE TRACKER as firstly the three leads did an incredible job acting wise and made the predicaments very believable which I won't spoil in this review. I believed their reactions to the Life Tracker Limited prints for themselves but also surprised at the same time as while some reactions could have been very clichéd, the writing never went there and that made the film very refreshing.
What I love the most about LIFE TRACKER though is the attention to detail especially when it came to the political and religious implications of such a technology being unleashed on modern-day society cause lets face it, humanity isn't ready for something like that nor do I think it ever will be. All of this being told through the documentary work of Dillon as he inter-cuts news media from the internet, his own interviews with those with a particular expertise and so on. I must applaud director/writer Joe McClean and his production crew for putting together excellent material for this independent film and for making sure that no detail be missed including news footage, graphics, etc. The interviews that Dillon has with religious experts, medical professionals and just ordinary folks in the streets were terrifically executed and this was helped greatly by a very well thought out script.
Once everything is said and done though, the strongest aspect that anyone would expect from a film like this is the human emotions and reactions of the lead characters which as I mentioned were very strong and believable. As I watched the film, I put myself in their shoes and thought to myself "Oh man, they shouldn't know this information!" or "I would probably react the same way." and to me those kind of films are special. This is the reason why so many larger found-footage/documentary style films of late don't work for me like PARANORMAL ACTIVITY while LIFE TRACKER does because the reactions of the characters aren't there just to serve the plot, they actually feel real and we can relate to them.
LIFE TRACKER makes you think and and to me there's no better kind of film. It takes the current state of humanity and mixes in this life- changing technology with results that I believe would be pretty much spot-on if Life Tracker was actual real today. From the political/financial/religious unrest to personal doubt and beliefs, LIFE TRACKER covers it all and even leads to a great conclusion that I wasn't prepared for. All of this combined makes LIFE TRACKER one of my favorite films of 2013 and I highly recommend it to everyone. Congratulations to all the cast and crew who have a bright future ahead.
We found "Life Tracker" via On Demand's sci-fi selection of new releases. This movie has a synopsis that is intriguing: if your genes could predict your future, would you want to know? It is an original idea, with believable actors, and a surprise conflict (even to those desensitized and/ or jaded…) that kept my interest until the bitter end. I am not typically a fan of "found footage" movies, but I forgot about the filming style as it was deeply incorporated into the plot of the movie. Genetic reading is not such a far-fetched idea. Genetic research and it's scientific credibility has grown to be a powerful tool in medical and forensic fields. It seems to be the key to everything. The characters in this film are relatable and gripping. We watch their initial jovial disposition (regarding the genetic readings) shift into a tenacious and frightened need to know.
~Mary Ann @grabdmama and Shannon @feralthundercat