Directed by Paul Hyett
Starring  Hannah Arterton, Tom Conti and Rosie Day
Running time: 1 hour and 29 minutes

by Samuel Antezana

A satiric assault on the senses, Paul Hyett’s Peripheral is an angry and, at times, effective film about the dangers of technological infiltration and surveillance within our rapidly evolving digital world. The story follows Bobbi Johnson (Hannah Arterton), a young novelist made infamous by her incendiary debut novel Bite the Hand, who struggles to write her second novel, Peripheral. Bobbi’s manipulative publisher, Jordan, pushes her to leave her outdated typewriter for a new smart editing software that may not just be altering her new novel, but possibly her body and mind.

Like Hyett’s gritty feature debut, The Seasoning House (2012), Peripheral is loaded with bold imagery. Instead of the washed out grey filters that Hyett utilized in The Seasoning House, he highlights the technological invasion of Bobbi’s life through color contrasts, something that is visually accentuated by having the entire film take place in her single floor townhouse. Neon lights create a stark differentiation between the “state of the art intelligent writing assistant,” as her publisher calls it, and Bobbi’s drab, free-of-any-real-modern-technology home. An aggressive electronic score helps to further emphasize the aforementioned contrasts, especially since most of the pounding bass and synths begin to make their presence known when the machine is first installed in Bobbi’s living room, complete with its own artificial bleeps and bloops.

Aside from strong visuals, there is a hefty amount of commentary on the nature of power in a digital age where technology seemingly covers all facets of one’s daily life. Those familiar with David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983) and Existenz (1999) will see a lot of their influence in this, complete with some flashes of body horror that definitely push the genre boundary from digital thriller to sci-fi/horror. However, I couldn’t help but feel a bit overwhelmed with all of the ideas that are being played with in relation to technology. On one hand, I understand that this could be a stylistic choice to get viewers to feel like they themselves are experiencing information overload. On the other hand, some of the commentary on the dangers of technology comes off as heavy handed, and sometimes even laughable. For example, there is a part where Bobbi’s ex, Dylan, tries to get her to hold some drugs for him because he is trying to quit, but she is uncomfortable with the idea because she, herself, is a recovering addict. He gets a glimpse of her new editing software and comments, “You know that technology is an addiction.

You just swapped one drug for another.” Good one Dylan, as if we haven’t heard that before. While the commentary about technology’s effects on society can come off as a bit too on the nose, Bobbi’s journey is successfully engrossing, much in part because of Hannah Arterton’s commitment to the role. Arterton brings a fire to Bobbi that you can see grow when she tries to rebel against “the machine” as well as the people in her life, who seem to be manipulating her. In addition, the role looks physically demanding, with Hannah having to wear prosthetics in some scenes and expressing a range of physical movements as well as emotion. There is also a sensitivity Arterton lends Bobbi, which allows viewers to feel a sense of heartbreak when Bobbi can’t write what it is that she really wants to or when she destroys something that would be deemed “unmarketable” by her publisher. The emotional discomfort that viewers will feel is doubled with the inclusion of a disturbed character who keeps sending Bobbi VHS tapes of her self-harming because Bobbi’s failure to correspond with her, bringing another complicated idea into the mix of whether or not authors/artists have some sort of moral responsibility when it comes to their fans.

Peripheral may not contain the most groundbreaking commentary on technology, but it certainly has enough to merit a watch from genre fans and literary enthusiasts. Arterton’s strong performance, Hyett’s pronounced visual palette and a decently engaging story with plenty of twists and turns will definitely be enough to make many people fans of this one.

Watch Peripheral digitally int he UK courtesy of Blue Finch Films today. Also available on iTunes, Amazon, Google, Sky and Virgin.