Stereo (Tile 3B of a CAEE Educational Mosaic)

Directed by David Cronenberg, Stereo (Tile 3B of a CAEE Educational Mosaic) details the oddball exploits of several young volunteers as they agree to participate in a parapsychological experiment. Filmmaker Cronenberg, armed with his own screenplay (and making his debut here), offers up a striking yet entirely underwhelming (and uninvolving) disaster that contains few (if any) attributes designed to capture and sustain the viewer’s interest, and there’s little doubt, certainly, that the picture’s pervasive arms-length atmosphere is compounded by incoherent, laughably pretentious voice-over narration – with Cronenberg’s reliance on meaningless psychobabble quickly transforming the picture into a seriously intolerable (and interminable) experience. And while the movie admittedly does boast some striking visuals, particularly given its rather irresistible brutalist setting, Stereo (Tile 3B of a CAEE Educational Mosaic)‘s total lack of forward momentum, coupled with its underdeveloped characters and amateurish performances, ensures that it feels so much longer than its 65 minute running time – with the end result a hopelessly misguided debut that displays exceedingly little in the way of potential or promise.

* out of ****