User Reviews (64)

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  • Warning: Spoilers
    I watch a lot of movies on Netflix and Amazon Prime that apparently were released direct to cable/DVD/streaming sites or sank without a trace before they ever made it to the theaters where I live, and this is pretty typical of what you get from that level of film making. But there's plenty to enjoy if you keep your expectations appropriate to the budget.

    "Anti Matter" is pretty good. It looks good, it sounds good. The cast is interesting and attractive and works well together, and the screenplay sets up an enigma that it tries hard to play fair with.

    But the writing lacks the final level of polish that would make this a great movie.

    It isn't quite clever enough to live up to the premise it sets itself about what happens when a human goes through a teleporter and then wakes up with no memory of the event. Or rather, the screenplay builds the sense of creepiness and unease (and is about 15 minutes too long), but the solution, when you finally get to it, is unsatisfying (though I will admit it took me by surprise.)

    I blame a lot of that on the obviously tiny budget and the semi-pro level of writing that got a lot of good moments into the movie, but just couldn't go deep enough with the time and budget they had.

    That said, this was still worth watching, and I would happily try another movie from this same group or these actors.
  • Whilst there are irrelevant side plots, and some parts are slow, it's pretty well acted, the tension and mystery are built well, the the ending is surprising.

    Obviously the science makes no sense, but that's not what stories are for. A good effort.
  • Pop quiz hotshot, you wake up one morning and go see your friends. They are suddenly acting very evasive and hostile towards you. Do you a) ask them what is the matter and wait for an answer, or b) just ignore it and carry on as though nothing is wrong. What do you do. What do you do?

    If your answer is a, welcome to the real world. If your answer is b, you will love this film. An interesting premise ruined by people deciding not to act as any normal person would do. Indeed, if they did act normally, this film would be around 30 minutes long and actually be a really good short film. Such as it is, we have to sit through an hour and a half of a mish mash of genres, to an ending that basically could've been tied up long before you get through your first handful of popcorn.

    Anti Matter, or Worm, follows the story of 3 scientists who invent a wormhole, basically. I couldn't tell you any more because the first part of the film is so filled with scientific terminology that they could've been making anything, really. It then turns into scifi, a bit of horror, a random chase movie thriller, and a romantic drama. It's all well done all the whole, the acting is decent, directing is solid and the script is serviceable. So far, so 7 or 8 out of 10.

    The problem is that the story, in order to fill a decent run time, becomes so convoluted that it begins to detract from the film's central ideas. The chase scene is so bizarre, it seems to have been taken from another film. The various red herrings are unnecessary and increasingly ridiculous, culminating in a comical playground chant that I genuinely couldn't work out was meant to be serious or not. There's even a gratuitous sex scene, which possibly ranks as the most shoe-horned excuse for nudity that I've ever seen.

    It's so frustrating that a movie with an interesting idea and decent cast and crew would feel the need to keep adding more and more nonsense, and culminate in an ending which is nonsensical to the point of just kind of shrugging and going, "well, yeah, there you go". There's even a touch of ambiguity about it, which would've had me walking out if I wasn't comatose already.

    How you like this film will depend entirely on my opening question. If you don't mind the fact that everything that happens could have been easily explained straight away, and not slowly dragged out, than give it a shot. I don't like it, but I respect it.
  • It's a low-budget film, and actually, they make the budget go a long way. I liked the story, the acting was fine, and the production design and effects were spot on. I do agree with some reviewers that it could lose 10 minutes near the end. I hope we get to see more from this writer/director.
  • I had no idea this was a low budget/indie film until I read that it was. Keep in mind there are no high tech CGI gimmicks as far as I can tell and no famous Hollywood actors in it. Still, the film was good, much better than the usual low budget drivel. The acting was really good. The director must have made a choice to not use his limited budget on CGI and that must be a good decision because low budget CGI makes a movie look like low budget. Low budget usually also shows in the props and studio setting that is used. Again, good choices must have been made so that the low budget is hidden. Excellent work. I can only imagine what this crew can do with more $$$. Thanks
  • begob28 July 2017
    Warning: Spoilers
    A student scientist makes a world changing discovery, but to confirm her hypothesis she must experiment on herself, and it doesn't turn out the way she expected ...

    Hmmm. This is real sci-fi, taking a plausible development and exploring what it does to humans, and the opening act is really promising. The first 25 minutes has a good balance between character and exposition, introducing interesting people, a bit of back story, and just about letting the audience keep up with the technical stuff through mounting tension.

    After that it fell apart for me. The dialogue was flabby, with repeated questions-questions, and many scenes where the actors struggled to give the story direction. There's a two-shot in a restaurant where nothing the characters say adds anything to the story. And a chase scene which feels inappropriate for the character, as she plummets through a window and slides across the front of a car. That was the point I began to lose interest, and the dialogue added to the chore of watching through to the end. The final annoyance was when they explained the fabric of space-time with the space-time honoured piece of paper.

    The performances by the two female leads are good, but I could have done without the mama and the alzheimers red herring. Also the animal rights angle with the police isn't necessary for the story. The writer/director really needed to cut savagely and reimagine the second act. In the end, it's just too talky and sentimental.

    Nothing special about the photography, and the music is ordinary with a constant background radiation to maintain the mood. The outside locations were good.

    Overall: Good start spoiled by incoherent drama.
  • A few plot holes but it kept my attention throughout
  • I can just suffice to tell you this film has a low-budget/student film feel in all of the movie's aspects (writing, editing, flow), so you'll need have patience with everything as you watch.

    I guess all positive reviews (e.g. Rotten Tomatoes) seem to keep this in mind but this is not made clear, which has most likely lead to these (in my eyes) problematic recommendations.

    If you are expecting a mature or commercial film like I was, move on, as I can tell you I went in with that mindset and was quickly bored here.
  • Stonesnort13 September 2017
    I don't have a problem with low budget movies. But they have to have a good plot, twists you don't see coming and and ending that makes some sort of sense. The premise of this film is that a scientist discovers a way to create wormholes to move matter. Her two colleagues work with her to test the wormhole machine and keep it secret so they can patent the process. They test it on marbles, Rubik's cube, plants, worm, mice, cat. Oh gee, what will they feel they need to test it on next? If you can't figure that out and foresee what will happen when one of them is the test subject you must have never watched any sci fi ever. After that the movie relies on the type of plot where no one communicates with anyone else. After boring the audience at the beginning of the movie with all the science behind the wormhole process it has a very unscientific and implausible ending. The worse part is I paid to rent this movie on Amazon, based on Rotten Tomatoes rating and now I feel I can never trust RT again.
  • There is a philosophical component to the plot of the movie. I think that ruined it. Other than that, it started cool, the pace was good, the story was interesting, I was hooked. Then, at about half, the entire thing turned into the old "what is going on? Am I insane or is it real?" cliché which I personally abhor. And then the ending explained some things, but didn't really make me understand why I spent a quarter of a movie watching scenes that didn't make sense. And then it ended with a weak "don't play god" thing.

    I really wanted it to be more than a back of a napkin plot twist at the end, but it wasn't. So much setup for something that was basically a butt of a joke. Physics doesn't turn into metaphysics just because you equate apples with oranges.

    Bottom line: it started great and it fizzled in the end. The structure of the movie was good and the ending was artistic enough to not really matter in the overall story.
  • The direction and acting is horrible. The dialogue delivery seems dubbed though they are speaking in English. The writer(s) did not work on the characterization of each characters. The story that could have been done in 30 minutes kept elongated unnecessarily.

    Wonderful idea but bad screenplay, bad acting, bad direction. Disappointing.
  • I have said before that if I had a dollar for every "auteur" indie (where the writer and director were one and the same) that aimed for the stars but kept hitting the floor, well, I could retire.

    But for every dozen or so indies that hit a brick wall, one soars. This is the one that soars.

    Indeed it aims high, turning what looks like a basic "sci fi experiment gone wrong" into an existential crisis of the soul.

    But it succeeds, astonishingly, at being both entertaining and bemusing.

    I was glued to the screen from the beginning to the end. That seldom happens.

    The actors, the script, the direction, all remind me of Hitchcock at his peak. YOU CARE WHAT HAPPENS TO THESE PEOPLE.

    And the editing, OMG. This is the first film I can recall where aggressive editing was used instead of complex SFX. The editing is beyond brilliant, it moves the audience at a visceral level from scene to scene.

    Recommended.
  • I see a lot of bad reviews for this film but you have to balance your expectations within the budget of the movie.

    This was a low budget movie and didn't have the hundreds of millions; or even millions to spend so they did what they could within their abilities and this hearkens back to the great movies of John Carpenter and others like the original Terminator movies with special effects guys like Stan Winston and Rob Bottin who would use chewing gum and tomato sauce (The Thing) for many effects to save the budget - you don't have to spend a lot to make a good movie and although there are a lot of scientific holes and anomalies in this movie that the anal-brigade seem obsessed with pointing out; these are the kinds of people who have lost the inner child and cannot go to a movie and just shut off and immerse themselves in the fantasy and that's quite sad! I myself can still watch Doctor Who or Blakes 7 and believe its on a distant planet and not filmed in a wet quarry in Newcastle on a gloomy Sunday afternoon.

    There seem to be two types of Scifi fans these days - the ones who expect lots of CGI and effects, poor acting and not much story (The new Star Wars franchise comes to mind) and it seems to be our younger generation - that says a lot about society in itself and then there are the old traditionalists who don't need massive CGI , effects and budget but want a good story, good acting and some interesting science; whether its quantum or singular and that seems to be us older Trekkies and viewers who can suspend disbelief!

    If you are of the former you wont enjoy this film but if you are in the latter category you might just find this an interesting little film.
  • FeastMode26 July 2019
    Warning: Spoilers
    Poorly made, poorly acted, poorly directed, poor characters. other than the general intrigue of the premise, this movie is bad. i don't understand the ratings, and i am really starting to be convinced that they are for sale. other than it being poorly made, it just generally sucks. and the characters were seriously annoying. all of them (1 viewing)

    SPOILERS

    it tries to copy off of primer with duplicating a person (sort of). i didn't like that movie, but i could at least see why some ppl liked it, i don't see why anyone liked this piece of garbage. the majority of the movie was ana accusing and the other two denying. over and over, it was frustrating.
  • They did not made that movie for people who just watch blockbusters where everything is easy to follow and understand.

    Small budget with lots of props and it was made well enough to be entertaining and captivating.

    I wish more movies were made like this.
  • Warning: Spoilers
    Definitely watchable, but no science fiction graphics like that in the poster. Like nothing. in fact I was sure the cover was incorrect for the film. Its essentially what I'd expect if I went to a talented artist and said i need a poster made up for a movie, its science & fictional, and called antimatter. And that's it.
  • I really don't want to insult anyone involved with this film but this was the definition of a waste of time. Misleading poster/cover (I think someone else posted about that), B-grade script/plot/acting, clumsy exposition, terrible cliche/caricature characters.. the list goes on. Do yourself a favour, if you haven't watched Primer yet, watch that instead of this movie and if you have watched Primer, don't waste your time on this.
  • angiemel-9317 November 2017
    Warning: Spoilers
    While we guessed what was going on before the reveal, we were still glued to the screen and needed to know more. We weren't sure if our guess was right. It's a good thriller. If you're considering watching this movie, go ahead and watch it, it's suspenseful but not too slow, and a bit refreshing.

    I do however agree with other commentators that the movie poster/cover was misleading. And acting was the main reason of my overall rating.

    As for social impact, I like that a) there was a female lead b) female lead from a different heritage c) female supporting actresses on two accounts. d) featured two strong female scientists e) the male lead had no backstory and was simply the boy-toy, also the softer one of the three. This alone doesn't please me obviously, it's more in regard to how it's usually the other way around.

    Basically a good refreshing cast, featuring intelligent scientific women, one of whom is a Latina.

    (I'm not the most eloquent but I hope you get my point)
  • Warning: Spoilers
    First of all, the title has nothing to do with the story or the plot. There is no antimatter, not even mentioned anywhere. The worst part? Not having antimatter in this film just makes it better (or less horrible).

    The story goes like this: a chemist runs tests on battery stability to electromagnetic interference and accidentally discovers a whatever-that-doesn't-matter-plus-pi (unfortunately, yes, literally, she adds pi to the "algorithm", although her friend warns her that she "can't use pi this way", ouch!) that creates a mini super-portable garage-made wormhole... Who needs to align collapsing stars to create a wormhole, right?! Just a few volts of electricity and petaflops of computing power can do the trick, for sure...

    If your brain survives that initial nonsense, then you are for a roller-coaster... Of boredom! It plays like this: main character enters the wormhole as a test subject, to make a video to get funding for the project. The experiment goes wrong, leaving a photonic trail/copy/doppelganger of main character behind, which has long term memories, but for whatever reason cannot keep new memories (but also doesn't age, tire, eat, sleep etc., although it can bleed, also, for whatever reason). The photonic leftover thinks it is the real thing and runs loose, trying to find out why her friends are acting weird, not knowing/remembering that it is just a "thing" made of photons, not a "real person".

    Cutting all the drama down (and is is about 99% of the film, the rest is that agonising crap-fiction), the photonic copy finds her original in the laboratory, where it hears the whole story of what it is (again, because the characters tell it they've been doing it over and over again, but she always ends up forgetting and redoing everything). It is convinced to let itself be destroyed by the wormhole machine, because it is the right thing to do and that will end all the suffering (and because the main character also incorporates her doppelganger's memories, somehow, or so she says, maybe just to help to convince the photocopy to kill itself).

    The photoganger jumps into the machine and simply disappears. Everybody happy, they leave the lab and... Camera zooms in on a cocoon (a caterpillar from an earlier experiment with the wormhole) and... Credits roll...

    Does anyone remember a cheesy series named "Automan"? I enjoyed that series, for three reasons: it was (baffling) cheesy (even for the 1980's standards!), Cursor (Automan's sidekick, a blatant copy of Bit from "Tron") was amazingly entertaining (mainly considering it couldn't even talk) and it had zero Science on the fiction!

    That's exactly the opposite with this film, it tries to bring Science to the dumbest of fiction. The explanations are stupid even without taking into account the distorted Quantum Physics mumbo-jumbo. In the end, the effect is exactly the same as in Automan: a character made of light that can interact with the real world without needing powerful hologram lasers constantly pumping photons to keep it "alive".

    Why the photonic doppelganger has long term memories but is unable to keep short term ones? If it cannot keep short term memories, how is it even able to "live" (e.g., suppose it is walking, then a second later it should forget that it was walking and would simply stumble and fall, not even remembering that it was even standing a second before, much less walking, and so on for everything else). The character remembers and forgets things on the convenience of the plot, which literally goes nowhere (it starts in the lab and ends in the lab with nothing changing or even interesting happening in-between).

    That's just one of so many things that make no sense in this film. Why does the photocopy bleed, as it doesn't eat, i.e., its body has no metabolism (and if it does, why couldn't it find blood cells in the microscope when it tested itself)?

    I resisted the temptation to check the clock every minute, because that made time pass much slower. 1h45min of useless chases, pseudo-scientific crap and boredom, so much boredom! Why didn't the photonic copy die when people started turning on their toasters in the morning, like Automan thankfully did?

    The best part of this film is the title, it's very exploitable for jokes... Unfunny ones, for that Matter...
  • I'm not writing any serious stuff here just what I felt about the twist and everything. Well, I'm already spent big part of my life watching movies, lately I saw nice movies, okayish movies and the 'whatever ones'. But this thing, although it's probably not the best movie I ever saw (no offense), this piece is already something. You were doing short movies, then this, and Sir, you just made it, twisted my head, gave me bad feelings and a warm surprise which I haven't felt some time ago - you put a real shining star up in the sky.

    I don't know how soon you some smart Hollywood producer will give you a buzz but I may predict right here that someone want to do a bigger budget movie out of this; I'm pretty sure.

    Great story, great job, great cinematography, little cracks in the story telling but nothing seriously negative. Do you realize that you are not a student anymore, right? As you got me, I'll keep an eye out for your movies and I can recommend this to anyone who's reading this.

    One more thing: Yaiza is so cool and did such a decent acting! OF course, Tom and Philippa too but Yaiza was just wooow. So overall verdict for me is an 8 which is more like 9ish but surprise factor is 10.
  • Probably the stupidest movie I have ever experienced. They could stage the theory in a great way and everyone would love that. But this was very very cheap. Some people actually do not understand how to present something boring. Science is boring for most people on the planet but still they loved movies like Interstellar. The way they have played with physics, it became a joke! Total waste of time!!
  • Anti matter is evidence that you don't need a massive budget, multi- million pound special effects or A list actors to carry a film if the plot and story is a good...

    To be honest I'm the target for this type of sci fi and I really enjoyed watching it from start to finish, I look for films like this one and like to watch on my own without interruption. Time Lapse is another low budget favourite of mine.

    I can't understand the negative reviews; I mean what were you expecting from a low budget, independent production? The story telling is solid and outcome satisfying.

    I did guess what was going on quite early, but that's because its my genre, but it didn't spoil my enjoyment
  • Warning: Spoilers
    If you know too much about science, this movie will fall apart for you. As much as you want to like the characters, and to cheer them on, the lack of real science just destroys the experience. It just rubs me as a waste of potential.

    The basic concept of this film is not a new one. It addresses the philosophical problem of "teleporting" a person by creating a copy of the traveler at the destination, while simultaneously, destroying the original. What happens if you don't destroy the original? Which traveler is the "real" traveler?

    This movie attempted novelty by producing this philosophical dilemma in a different way. Sadly, the story writers seemed to go the direction of making up fantasy-science to fit their story.

    The main character, Ana, is an American chemist who is conducting a physics experiment in a basement at Oxford (strange already). She's a strong independent woman. Her team also consists of what seems to be an engineer, Nate, and an undergrad, Liv. Nate is a caring and nurturing boyfriend to Ana.

    We find out that Liv wrote a computer virus that infected millions of computers in order to aid their project in some way. All they care about is getting the patents to win prizes and get rich. The characters do way too many things uncharacteristic of "scientists."

    Overall poor representation of women, science, and women in science. All in all, it could have been a great film.
  • It might be good for some - but dear gawd it dragged. That just about sums it up. The film has an interesting premise but even getting to the point of the film when you found out what the basic story was, took too long just to get there.

    The acting was fine. Those involved clearly did their best. The writing at times was sadly appalling. It was simply dragged out far, far too much. Was this a very poor attempt to create some from of suspense within the film? If it was, it just left myself even more completely bored.

    I genuinely would have liked to rate this higher but couldn't - and I am a avid sci-fi fan. Damn shame it went on ...and on ...and on... At one stage I actually started to nod off. Enough said!
  • Warning: Spoilers
    Plot spoiler for Trekkies.

    A group of college kids playing with an algorithm controlling an electronic pulse create a device that opens a wormhole. In a rush for funding, the decide one of them should go through the machine. Ana (Yaiza Figueroa) is selected. However soon things go weird for Ana as her memory keeps failing her.

    This is a low budget science fiction film which geeks will hail like "Primer." The big difference between the two films is that this one managed to have a woman in it. The acting was okay, and I pretty much nailed the mystery being a Trekkie, having watched "The Enemy Within." The film has two main issues. One is that any wormhole shuts down as soon as something is placed inside. Having it stay open too long is not an issue. There are other wormhole issues, but I will spare you. The second problem is the title. Technically there is no "anti matter" in the film. A positron is antimatter. A photon is not.

    Guide: F-word. brief sex and nudity (Yaiza Figueroa)
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