An anomaly is something that deviates from what is normal or expected. Admittedly, in director/star Noel Clarke’s low-budget sci-fi actioner, the acting and script do provoke surprise: both are so bad, you find yourself wondering if what’s unfolding is some kind of parody.
In Richard Ayoade’s The Double, Paddy Considine played a stilted, futuristic killing machine who always gets the last word. The derring-do displayed by Clarke — as an ex-soldier who discovers he’s part of a deadly mind-control programme — is, if anything, an iota more stiff.
Sporadically regaining his own identity, hero Ryan fights a series of goons in slo-mo, saves a cute prostitute and, when he encounters a scientist (Brian Cox) yells, “Tell me about mind control!”
Ian Somerhalder (The Vampire Diaries) is better as the urbane American who turns out to be calling the shots. He seems aware that what he’s spouting has been ripped off from numerous superior films but has an air of conviction, too.
Still, nothing can distract us from the interminable speechifying. Ryan is the victim of a process akin to cloning known as “droning”. Clarke’s film cries out for a new title: Droning On.
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