FrightFest Glasgow review – Psyche (2025)
After a caption which kind of gives away the twist, Mara (Sarah Ritter) wakes up in a wilderness with only a talking 1990s computer monitor for company – she has to hook up a keyboard from her rucksack to start what is at once a spiritual quest and a struggle-through-the-levels computer game. Shot on terrific locations in widescreen, with Ritter holding the screen more or less on her own, this is at once easy to follow and deliberately vague about how Mara got here, where here is, and what her motivation is to go along with suggestions from her screen. It has some witty techie elements – after so many films with tiny portable comms devices, it’s a change to see a heroine having to haul heavy, clunky gear across rocks and rubble … and a crucial moment comes as she argues through a response tree of automatic voices in an attempt to talk with a real person, only to find a supposed person contradicting the one thing she’s been relying on. A backstory emerges, but this adheres fairly strictly to the wandering-in-limbo sub-genre and until a scary shadow (Danielle Cichon) starts dogging Mara’s steps it’s a little light on actual peril. At 71 minutes, it doesn’t outstay its welcome. Written by Gibran Lozano, who plays one of the voices, and directed by Stephon Stewart, of Zugzwang and Bigfoot County.
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