The A-Frame
Pianist Donna (Dana Namerode) has bone cancer in her right hand – and the best treatment on offer from conventional medicine is amputation and coming up with something else to do with her life. She’s low-key stalked by quantum physicist Sam (Johnny Whitworth), who is at once an isolated individual living in his laboratory and a cybercreeper with no sense of personal or ethical boundaries. He tells her that the apparatus he has built to perform string theory experiments has had a side effect of curing cancer in rats and has been looking for a human test subject – though he admits he has no medical background and was trying to do something else with his A-frame gizmo.
In the spirit of nothing ventured, Donna puts her arm in an osmium-shielded gizmo and her cancer vanishes – which turns out to be a mixed blessing. She can’t explain why she’s cured, a support group leader (Laketa Caston) doesn’t want her to peddle miracles to other patients, and Sam starts wheedling her to convince far more terminal stand-up comic Rishi (Nik Dodani, from Twisters) to go through the whole body version of his process – which involves teleportation between two sites (evoking The Fly) just to slow down the effect to the point where it’s observable and quantifiable.
The science fiction angle – which eventually brings in some gloopy if sparingly-used gore effects – is secondary to the cancer journey drama, which is sensitively written and underplayed – even if that means bringing the film down to earth after opening up realms of parallel reality. Written and directed by Calvin Lee Reeder, it has some pleasing mad-lab art direction and a nicely designed big gadget.
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