No one can wring more documentarian juice from a conspiracy theory than Rodney Ascher. With A Glitch in the Matrix, the director of Room 237 – a deconstruction of the multitude of fan theories centered around Stanley Kubrick and his making of The Shining (including the oft-trend myth that the film included a subtle confession that Kubrick helped fake the moon landing) – and The Nightmare – an eerie, if wonky, study of the terrors of sleep paralysis – has settled soundly into his niche, creating his most complete and haunting film to date as he begs the question, “Are we living in a simulation?”

The implications of this query are vast and Ascher does an excellent job tracking the scientific, philosophical, theological, and technological fallout of this timeless thought experiment, including how different forms of this very question have existed since Classical Greece, most directly in Plato’s writings in “The Cave”. Through a combination of interviews with experts and amateurs, Ascher smartly weaves together antidotal and authoritative takes on the subject including segments that include Phillip K. Dick and Elon Musk’s musings on the topic as well as amateur accounts of “awakenings”.

That some of his subjects remain shrouded beneath a digital avatar (obscuring their actual identities) works to amplify the underlying eeriness of the questions driving his film: what is reality and how can we tell that ours is real? As technology drives unceasing innovation – and ever-increasing dependence upon it – the lines between real and not-real blur further. The fact that one of the people being interviewed is able to appear on the screen as a kind of cartoony squid monster only emphasizes this strange fact. 

A Glitch in the Matrix makes good on its promise to illuminate the many arguments in favor of simulation theory – as expected, it explores the Mandela Effect (including the classic Berenstain/Berenstein Bears example) – but also makes a point of underscoring the very real-world implications that come with taking these theories too much to heart. What happens to a person – especially one with undiagnosed mental illness – when they believe they are the only “real” existence in a world of non-playable characters? Too often: violence. 

Ascher has an ace up his sleeve on this front and presents the story of a young man warped by his unflappable obsession with the Keanu Reeves’ sci-fi classic The Matrix who believes increasingly that he is living in that very same Matrix. Ascher ratchets up the tension by letting the music from Jonathan Snipes boom and take over in undulating waves of bass. Most will surely come out of  A Glitch in the Matrix remembering “that” scene, a memory described in gruesome detail by a man whose grip on reality had become completely untethered; it’s so absolutely haunting you’ll be wont to take an ice-cold shower and slap yourself enough times to ensure that you are not dreaming. That Ascher can whip up what is truly one of the scariest things you’ll see in a movie, documentary or otherwise, speaks to the fascinating spell this documentary casts.

CONCLUSION: As fascinating, thought-provoking, and well-researched a documentary as ‘A Glitch in the Matrix’ is, it also proves to be utterly terrifying in both its study of simulation theory and the dark real world implications it poses.

B+

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