Pulpmovies Reviews

There are, according to Look’s opening credits, approximately 30 million surveillance cameras in the US generating more than 4 billion hours of footage every week. And there are even more in the UK. These cameras are often intrusive and of very little, if any, practical value.

Adam Rifkin’s film attempts to explore the extent to which our privacy has been eroded by the escalating numbers of CCTV cameras and to ask whether we really are alone when we think we are. And he attempts to do this by way of several interweaving storylines, all of which are shot from the point of view of security cameras.

We have a couple of kewl chix, Sherri (Spencer Redford) and Holly (Heather Hogan), who are first seen in a department store changing room as Sherri plots to seduce her teacher, Mr. Krebbs (Jamie McShane). In the same store we have predatory manager, Tony (Hayes MacArthur) who appears to be determined to work his way through his entire female staff.

Then we have Marty (Ben Weber), the nerdy insurance claims clerk, and butt of everyone’s jokes in the office, who harbours a dark secret which is rather suddenly revealed late in the film. More believably, we have an affair between two male lawyers (Paul Schackman and Chris Williams), one of whom has a family on the side. And the ensemble is rounded off by a shop assistant in an all night petrol station (Giuseppe Andrews) who dreams of a musical career.

The acting is very solid throughout and the use of less well-known faces does help maintain the CCTV conceit. Also, to give the impression that it is all being shot with hidden cameras, Rifkind limits himself to locations where such cameras can realistically be expected to be found – and there are many of them – and uses high angles with very little movement. Most of the time.

This brings me to the first problem I had with the film. The conceit is that everything is shot on security cameras, but this is quite clearly not the case. The the locations are too conveniently well lit, image quality is too good, we have sound, and the cameras do occasionally zoom in when the director wants to bring our attention to something. All of this hints – unintentionally, I think – at the question of who is watching and why, a question that really isn’t addressed at all. And by attempting to maintain the conceit in the face of its obvious artificiality, Rifkin makes it more difficult for the audience to maintain a suspension of disbelief than is really necessary.

My difficulty in maintaining a suspension of disbelief was not helped by the fact that, although the various vignettes are intertwined – but not very deeply - the various encounters between the characters tended to feel a little forced and more driven by a desire to progress the plot rather than a willingness to allow a human tapestry to emerge. And, unfortunately, this made it surprisingly difficult to engage with the characters so that when the film does start to take a darker turn I simply wasn’t buying into it any more.

On a technical level, there is a lot to commend in this film and, if nothing else, Rifkin does an excellent job of cataloguing the countless ways in which we are monitored every day. It’s a shame, therefore, that his approach came across as gimmicky and a little forced rather than genuinely insightful.

The rapid expansion of the use of hidden cameras is a serious issue and one that has a range of repercussions for both privacy and civil liberties and is an issue that does need to be both highlighted and discussed. Unfortunately, Look falls a long way short of achieving this.

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