The Anomaly (2014)

A guy wakes up in a room. There's a flashlight. He finds a kid chained to a wall. He frees him. They tinker with a wall and turns out they are inside a moving armored vehicle. No problem, they just push the door open and jump out when it stops and walk away. They are in London in the future. Well, the guys in the front aren't happy and start chasing them. The two escape to a cemetery where the kid tells him that men in red masks killed his mom. When the bad guys arrive, it turns out that Ryan has some fighting skills and he beats one of them. The other guy knows him. When Ryan starts going through his own pockets he finds a gun and a red mask. But suddenly something strange happens.Now he wakes up several days later in a room with books and with some type of plan on the wall. The bad guy is there as well. He talks to Ryan as if they work together on some project. We learn more about Ryan. He was military and confined to an institution for PTSD, panic, and anxiety. The boss and researcher there is Dr. Langham who took care of him. The bad guy is working on something that involves the kid.Again something jarring happens and Ryan wakes up having sex with a prostitute in New York days later. He remembers the kid and decides to take the prostitute with him, but first he has to go through her Russian pimp. More fights ensue. He promises her freedom of she helps him find the kid. Good thing he remembers information from the previous episodes and he notices that each time he has about 10 minutes to get things done before he's transported elsewhere. They escape but the Russians are in pursuit and they also run into the police.Next he wakes up in a room where a guy is being waterboarded by police. He's there as some physician who OKs whether to continue or stop the "interrogation". The victim is some researcher named Leonid. The two manage to escape. But at every turn the bad guy appears.Through more of these episodes we discover that Ryan has received some implants by a corporation run by the good Dr. Langham who now has the kid. The aim is through these implants to control people. The problem is that Ryan's implants have a connectivity issue with the satellite which is why he gets these 10 minutes where he gets to be himself. During the other times his body is controlled by Langham. Ryan with the help of the prostitute will try to stop the Langham project to control all humanity and to rescue the kid. He'll have to confront Langham and the bad guy who always shows up and is actually Langham's son.The Anomaly is interesting and a bit original. It mixes science with futuristic sci-fi with a fight action movie and all told in these short episodes. The science is the strongest aspect. There are also some interesting ideas about humanity and control. I wouldn't recommend looking for plot holes though because there are plenty. The weakest are the fights. Oddly enough it seems that the filmmakers knew the fights were weak too, and how could they not, however instead of trying to mask the weakness they further enhanced it with tricks designed to make good fights look good. Here instead we have several poor fights that looks even worse. They used some jumping camera work and Matrix-like slow-mo editing, which works when fights are fast at normal speeds. But if you have slow and weak punches to begin with and slow them down, well, the result is nothing to brag about. Another problem is the completely uncharismatic lead and a dry villain. You do end up disliking the bad guy mostly because he's a bit annoying and because his role isn't thought out well, but you certainly don't care at all for the hero. Things improve casting-wise once the lovely Alexis Knapp appears, unfortunately she doesn't get enough to do. The Anomaly is an intriguing, good looking movie that creates more expectations than it fulfills.

If only Noel Clarke had waited a little longer. If he had waited longer then he could have fixed the script and/or got a bigger studio to back him. This would have put this movie into the big leagues - a British Minority Report if you will.Noel Clarke plays Ryan, a PTSD soldier who wakes up in a mysterious place not knowing how he got there. He continues to black out, only becoming himself for a period of ten minutes. It turns out he's being controlled by another personality that has taken over his body and soon learns that the one controlling him has a dangerous objective.This is a great concept, almost like a Memento with the way the narrative flows. The way the story unfolds is intriguing and has you wanting to discover what's going on as much as our protagonist.However there are draw backs which is what I think is what has led to it's low score. The characters aren't very engaging to start. Clarke has proved to be a great actor but he's given himself little to work with here. The B grade villains and weird as hell cops don't help either. Ian Somerhalder is the only one who exerts any form of charisma and is given brief moments to truly shine. Others, however, fall flat.Another thing that bogs the script down is the number of frankly unbelievable plot contrivances. Some characters will make huge logic leaps to further the plot, while other times what our protagonist wants is simply handed to him on a silver plate. I suspect that this may be due to a low budget though which sadly makes the visual FX less than impressive.Another awkward part is the numerous fight scenes. Clarke is many things but he is not a martial artist and it shows quite a bit. The choreography is the standard Bourne rip off filler and it isn't executed very well. Rather than letting it play out in an intense way, the editor opted to constantly speed ramp parts from fast to slow which can look flashy but when it's in every fight scene it gets tiresome. This film could have been great, with more time taken on the script and a Luc Besson type director to give the overall film more of a personality. Perhaps this is a rare instance where more money would have helped a lot.As it is, The Anomaly is an interesting watch, but ultimately a bit forgettable which is a shame with such a good idea.

On the hunt for movies, I haven't seen yet - I came across some more unique ones- The Anomaly was one of them.The plot is interesting. It is a roller-coaster at first, and this is very likable. Though at the beginning, the movie suffers from pretty bad fighting scenes - it is not so much the fighting style, it is more continuous slow motions in really wrong timings. It is almost as the director just watched 300 and wanted to try out the technique. Not a so good idea (I have enjoyed 300 very much - however due to the epic format and better timings, the slow motions worked there far better). The fighting itself is not, what you see in blockbusters - though that doesn't mean that it is not good... I feel even more involved, as it is not extremely exaggerated. Yes - they could have done a better job - but it is definitely not one of the weaknesses of the movie.Kudos to the overall design. The flick has a futuristic look, (again) without being exaggerated and stupid. In this subject, I like the film more than a lot of Hollywood productions.Acting is adequate. Not that an A-list actor couldn't have brought more into it - but again, pretty much all actors are doing a quite good job and are believaable.Besides of the overdone slow-motions (which happen to occur less and less towards the end) - it is especially some inconsistencies in the storyboard which hurts though the believability. The main character has episodes of only 9min and 41sec (or so...) - to be himself in his body, however the actions what he does in every "episode" are far longer - often, it feels, that even the real time (oppose to the movie time) takes longer than 9 min - despite that some things (like bypassing a bigger area) are obviously not shown. You just start to wonder more and more... and basically it is not understandable - why did they just changed the length of the episode timings? Ah - yeah - the fixed time period as well is strange - it is explained that these episodes anyway happening, due to the uncommon frequent solar storms which disturb the signal of a satellite - though why does it then take exactly 10 minutes - are Solar storms always 9 min and 41 sec long. There are further inexplicable story points... Overall it is a good weekday film, which you can definitely enjoy. It is not a masterpiece - though some parts are so well done, that I wouldn't even consider it as B movie...

First of all: This is not Matrix and it hasn't quite near the budget. But! that doesn't matter! It's a very well-done Sci-Fi-Movie with a really cool story. In the first part you're like what the hell is going on. I was really surprised how purely this movie is rated in this data base. So i read some Reviews from users who said it is about average and the main critic they have is poor acting and poor fights. I can't agree. The fight-style is somewhat strange street-fighting, but absolutely OK. The actors are good. And the story is awesome. Yeah, there might be a time near the end of the movie when i thought OK now we could make a better step, but overall "The Anomaly" is pretty good. It's much like Matrix, but more atmosphere like in Equilibrium. Both movies are better than this one but slightly. You have to see that this is still a low-budget film and for that it's great! Don't expect perfection, but i absolutely enjoyed this Sci-Fi-Puzzle!