Holo: An Excellent Sci-Fi Drama Built on Intricate Writing

Alexander DeSouza’s Holo, written by Alexander Hernandez-Maxwell, is a sci-fi that deftly uses the science of it to foreground basic humanity. A wound requires healing, a festering wound demands debriding.

What the film does even better is leave behind a look-what-we-can-do enthusiasm that destroys the ground upon which fiction can nurture emotion. Instead Holo has the confidence to be restrained in pace, understated in its worldbuilding, elegant in its set design. Of note is minor character Denise (Beth Hornby), somewhere in the client liaison department. Where such faceless characters are mechanical and cold, Denise breaks the facade with a gesture of warmth that is instantly impressive.

The narrative strikes a balance for its audience between style and our aversion to time. Until the moment of confrontation (between a woman and her artificially reconstructed dead abuser), that is, until the plot kicks off less than a minute into the film, time makes itself felt as a tense breath: nesting and conspicuous.

The central storyline is simple: Claire (Morgan Kohan) needs closure to move on from her dead abusive partner, Jared (Shane West); the company Grey (Zelda Williams) works for provides just such services with its motion capture technology combined with hologram technology.

Part of what makes the film so compelling—and it is an especially compelling film—is the many absences central to the plot. Seen one way, only Claire exists in the room (Grey is only a body, an invisible and yet animating host for absent presences). Seen another, Claire is here with Jared. But Claire is really here with Grey, the two tangible presences. Yet, can Jared be said to be absent, merely because he is dead? Divided by a glass wall, the two women will enact a power relation over the course of the film that death has not yet smothered out of Claire’s skin.

The cast is spectacular, each tasked with flitting in and out of character modes. West shifts with deceptive ease between warmth and chilling danger. Williams is magnetic in her enigma. To be sure, it is a masculine characterisation but it is revealing in how well it suits Grey as a woman whose work is primarily intensified emotional labour. Kohan’s role is the most frenetic and vulnerable at its core. Even a display of strength later in the film is a burgeoning mixture of fear and rage, so that the act never manages to look strong, only destructive. Given that this is a proof-of-concept, it is exciting to imagine where and how the story takes its characters forward, especially exciting to see more of Grey, and more of her with Claire.

The climax pulls two twists from its sleeve, the first generously predictable so that the second may stun you with the depth of its undefinable feeling. If it is merely for the shock value—and that is an unlikely prospect—it certainly does not feel that way.

What Holo feels like is worth the wait for the whole thing.

Watch Holo Sci-Fi Short Film Trailer