The Discovery: A Sci-Fi Turns Into Horror in Real Time

Produced by ACAFilmes, The Discovery is a 26-minute sci-fi about a filmmaker trapped within his own movie. Shot entirely at home and devoid of any of the standard production values, the film stages itself as a vlog of a man condemned to eternity within his creative project. A ubiquitous experience, then.

In fact, it is a thoroughly self-reflexive film, often freezing itself into frames within an editing timeline. The paper-thin plot, existing in service to the flourishes of meta storytelling, hinges on Alexandre Alonso, the amateur filmmaker who is desperate and totally unable to escape himself and the diegesis of his own making. Made for his UCLA film school application, the project devolves rapidly into a sci-fi-horror when Alexandre finds himself facing his clone. The fourth wall has invaded, become a person whose presence simply cannot be ignored. And so the diegesis is forcibly opened up, the violence not entirely unrelated to the project’s AI origins.

He reacts first within plain rejection. This must be a bad trip, he thinks. He takes photos of himself but it only compounds the problem. His own, to top it off, is superior to him, because he possesses knowledge. The clone has the upper hand, which makes him ever so slightly threatening, even if their aims are essentially the same: to get out. The clone offers some modicum of explanation: taking photographs, shooting video, editing that video, each process is capable of trapping you inside the movie.

And yet real life intrudes with ease, leading the film to seemingly break from its narrative cohesion entirely. It provokes the clone into a further burst of despair about the frictionless arrival of entropy and the impossibility of a simple end.

The complications and wretched horror continue in spirals until the characters arrive at a possible answer, more bizarre and self-reflexive than anything until that point. Despite the lack of cinematic finesse, or perhaps because of that very reason, The Discovery successfully pushes you into an all-consuming discomfort that hurtles towards intolerability with remarkable efficiency. Reaching the end of the ride leaves you gasping and heaving because of how well it folds you into its airless nightmare. A development hell simultaneously unique and too familiar.

Watch The Discovery Short Film