Cryonic

There are some things that money can not buy, much to the chagrin of the mega-wealthy. They, like us, remain bound by the same mortal constraints — all life must end, right? Enter Cassie Wezniak’s heady sci-fi Cryonic, named after the pseudoscientific Hail Mary of freezing body parts (most importantly, the head) in hopes that future scientists will find a way to bring them back. This morbid aspiration has become increasingly popular in recent years, with hundreds of frozen heads now stored in facilities across the world. But how will these people return? What will the disembodied heads be attached to? Well, Wezniak may have an answer, one that does not bode well for the future of bodily autonomy.

The Black Mirror-esque short opens with Lilah (Emma Parks) telling a group of young women, all dressed in black tracksuits and enclosed in a minimalist, prison-like cell, that ‘the new trainee uniforms are blue’. Her comrade Rory (Sophie Rossman) notes the unfairness of their uniform’s lack of colour, and the irony of the colourway changing just as the group is about to leave. Today, after all, is their Choosing Ceremony, in which three graduates will be selected by a Woken (I’ll let you guess what this means) to become the next Vessels of Greatness. The Ceremony’s precise purpose remains unclear, as does the fate of those chosen to be Vessels and those who aren’t. Whatever the outcome, it hardly sounds promising.

Lilah and Rory have markedly different reactions to being Chosen. For Lilah it is an honour: the culmination of a lifetime of training and expectation finally realised. She doesn't know what it means, but she trusts the system enough to accept whatever it needs of her. Rory feels a little less convinced, releasing a guttural wail into a soundproof locker room to relieve the tension. For her, the unknowing is not a pleasurable anticipation; it is a deep dread. What do ‘these people’ want from her, and why did she have to unzip her jacket before she was selected? Parks and Rossman each embody these perspectives well — when Rossman later shares her trepidation, smiling stress ball in hand and fear in her eyes, Parks responds with all the right words but a far-off gaze, already imagining what the future may hold.

As with all great sci-fi conceits, the technology is merely a vessel for examining what humanity is willing to sacrifice in the name of progress, and wealth. In other words, what is lost to gain something ‘great’. Cryonic’s nimble script explores this question through Rory, who intuits that something is wrong but can’t quite put her finger on how that foreboding feeling will materialise. Yet the film is not without its thrills. Its brisk pace gives the story enough momentum to strike that careful balance between thematic introspection and sci-fi suspense. That balance occasionally falters, however, due to some unnatural editing, at times disrupting the action's spatial continuity and momentarily pulling the viewer out of the film's carefully constructed world.

The world itself is well realised, thanks to stark, convincing set design full of furniture equally at home in an apocalyptic future society as a high-end concept store. The soundscape is similarly immersive, if typical for the genre, although occasional mixing issues renders some of the dialogue almost Nolan-esque in its indecipherability. Nonetheless, Cryonic is an exciting debut from Wezniak, who demonstrates a clear knack for thoughtful storytelling and instinct for the unsettling.