It’s been a while since audiences have heard of the name Sasha Luss.

The Russian model-turned-actress was Infamous several years ago for being the unhealthy obsession of filmmaker Luc Besson. If you don’t remember the story, Besson was the subject of several #MeToo allegations about sexual assault and harassment which were later dropped. As Besson tried to beat the allegations, Luss became a personal muse for Besson who wrote, produced, and directed her in the 2019 film Anna. It is a film that sees Luss in many compromising positions as she sleeps with everyone in the movie who gets at least 5 minutes of screen time. It was like the director got off on watching other dudes have sex with her knowing he can’t.

Since then, Besson’s career has been on ice and so has Luss. Without a creepy director who is obsessed with her, Luss hasn’t been in much over the last five years until her name resurfaced in the latest film out of Lionsgate entitled Latency.

Latency is a film about a young girl named Hana who suffers from a crippling mental disorder of acute agoraphobia that leaves her unable to leave her apartment and decides to be the test monkey of a brand new piece of technology that links her computer and electronics with her brain. Hana’s only friend  Jen (Alexis Ren) is the one person that she can rely on to get things from the outside world.

As Hana begins to calibrate her brain with the equipment that requires her to inflict pain on herself to complete the process, she begins to imagine things and people inside her apartment. As time goes on, Hana begins to lose her ability to Distinguish between reality and what is a reflection of the device. Things get even worse as her agoraphobia leaves Hana as a prisoner in her room and her mind. 

With the fast progression of AI over the last couple of years Hollywood is prime to have several stories that use the abuse of Technology as a vehicle for psychological horror.  latency has a great idea however it accompanies terrible execution.  The movie is a 90-minute bottle film where the entire setting is the small apartment of our main character. 

 Hana is a girl who is mentally crippled by the idea of leaving her apartment and being around people. This turns Hannah into the equivalent of your average Twitch streamer who spends 20 hours a day online and never leaves their house. The setup of an interesting film is here but the movie does not have anything more to offer outside of the basic premise.

The girl allows a software company she is not familiar with to gain a ridiculous amount of access to her mind. Hannah believes that if she can improve her reaction time using the new technology she can enter a tournament and win $250,000 playing online first-person shooters. When she begins to see things and hear things that may or may not be there she begins to go insane.  The problem here is that the film does not give you a clear indication of what is happening in the story. 

Is the software company taking over her mind and forcing her to do things that she doesn’t want to do,  the film is not clear.  is the girl’s mental illness causing her to see horrific sites that have now been Amplified by the software,  the film isn’t clear.  Hannah is just nuts and now she’s going around killing people,  the film is not clear.

Latency is a film that drags you around for a ride but leaves you disappointed at the Final Destination.  Sasha has never been known for her acting ability but she doesn’t do a solid job as the protagonist here.  Her best friend in the movie, played by social media influencer Alexis Ren, has a bright personality but her character is wasted and tossed aside in the movie.

The film doesn’t know what it wants to be; it is not defined enough to even offer a good discussion of what the point of the movie is.  Is this a commentary on video games,  social media streamers,  artificial intelligence,  or just a story of untreated mental illness?  the second half of this movie falls apart and does the movie fall apart with it?

Any intrigue that the film had on its premise dies by becoming a confusing Thriller that lacks Direction and excitement. The film is a low budget effort given the production and the stars behind it but having a low budget does not excuse a bad story. Sasha Luss gives her best performance so far which isn’t saying much because her resume is fairly short.

Latency is a film that misses its window of being a meaningful thriller with a dull story and a piss-poor ending. 

1.5/5

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