Directed by Martin Grof
Written by Magdalena Drahovska, Martin Grof
Starring Eugene Simon, Emily Wyatt, Jennifer Martin
Unrated
Runtime: 1 hour, 36 minutes
Available digitally April 16

by Anthony Glassman, Contributor

Usually, when one undertakes to write a movie review, there is a sense of where to start, perhaps a pithy one-liner dealing with the plot or the performances or some such malarkey. I’ve done it literallly hundreds of times. It has never been a problem.

That is, until Martin Grof’s Sensation, heretofore known as “the film that broke Anthony Glassman’s ability to wittily begin a movie review.”

Ostensibly a dark, next-generation superhero movie about a group of people with a genetic predisposition to enhanced senses that allow them to perceive things beyond the limits endured by normal people, the film outmaneuvers itself with a third-reel surprise, ultimately deleting any agency the majority of the characters in the film ever had and leaving me feeling... disappointed? It’s really hard to say, because I had trouble investing emotionally in the film to begin with.

Eugene Simon (Lancel Lannister in Game of Thrones, AKA disposable pretty hunk #465) is Andrew Cooper, a young man whose mother is in a mental institution, having had a breakdown when his father disappeared. At least, I think that’s the explanation given, since situations in the film are fluid.

Anyway, the young man, who seems to do nothing other than brood and play the violin, goes to get the results of his DNA tests, only to be told there are no matches for him but they would like him to participate in a study. He refuses and goes on his way, only to be confronted by the smarmy doctor who gave him his results (Alastair G. Cumming), who then “activates” his powers with a strange flashlight, allowing him to beat up the doctor’s paramilitary thug. 

So, of course Simon decides to join in the study and go to some facility out in the country where he and a group of others are to be trained to use their abilities, so it will be safe for them in the world. Apparently, there is another group, supposedly Russian, also grabbing up genetic anomalies and training them.

Their instructors, the British version of Aubrey Plaza (Emily Wyatt) and a woman whose resting bitch face puts to shame any other human on the planet (Jennifer Martin), put them through the wringer, including British Aubrey Plaza’s Black Russian brother Yuri (Kai Francis Lewis), Ernesto (Alex Reid), Quinn (Lorraine Tai), Rebecca (Marybeth Havens) and Shaan (Anil Desai). Of them all, Andrew shows the greatest potential to “see reality beyond his senses,” or whatever drivel they spew at him.

So, this is the set-up the audience is given. Mind you, the fact that this program started in Nazi concentration camps, of which Andrew’s mother was a prisoner, and yet it’s 2021 and he’s about 25 and nobody is old enough for that timeline to work, is never actually explained. It’s just the bargain-basement ESP X-Men learning their powers...

Until it isn’t, and we get a big swerve that makes as little sense as anything else in the film.

The acting, even the directing by Grof, are not bad. They wouldn’t be on anyone’s ten-best list for the year, but everyone is serviceable, even Cumming’s weird, overly excitable performance. But somehow the script, by Grof and Magdalena Drahovska, seems like two (or three) first drafts put together, without anyone taking the time to do some editing or a bit of a rewrite. 

Grof’s first film, Excursion, won a handful of festival awards around the world, and sounds like it might have been more focused. However, even reading an interview with him about Sensation, he goes all-in on the ostensible direction of the film, hiding the twist that not only turned it on its head, but also cut its feet out from under it, which is a pretty amazing feat for a single plot twist.

I’ve seen worse films, admittedly, and as mentioned, the acting and directing is perfectly fine. The story, however, caused me to throw myself out a seventh-floor window and plummet to my death, so I hope Martin Grof is happy.