Disrupted Expectations 2: Becoming the Research Director

Disrupted Expectations 2: Becoming the Research Director is the second film in the Disrupted Expectations film series by Jorge Luis Villacorta Santamato. The Peruvian actor and filmmaker has made another feature-length film that is quite similar to two of his others that have been reviewed by the writer of this review, those two being Theoretically, An Even More Paranoid Conspiratorial Phone Call and Free Goody, Ugly Ranting, Disgruntled, Mysterious.

What are the similarities? One thing is a long title. Another thing is that once again, Santamato is the protagonist and only character in the film. More would be that the feature is separated into several sequences, with Santamato constantly present, with the camera always static but with a different environment. And like Free Goody, the character speaks, unlike Phone Call, where he remains silent.

What is there to be seen in this feature, then? Santamato himself playing a character over several scenes who is apparently pretending that he is talking to someone. Primarily filmed from the waist up, he constantly wears a suit and with the exception of the first sequence, he is clean-shaven. Each sequence last approximately ten to fifteen minutes and the environment (or maybe more appropriately: background) is different with each one, being a simple wall, a room with a painting and a bookshelf filled with books, a room with two religious paintings or a darkened room among others.

What does Santamato's character do in this film? He speaks to either someone who is off-screen or to a bunch of books. His monologues touch on a variety of subjects, including religion, knowledge and cynicism and each time he finishes a part, he walks off-screen, before reappearing. Initially, his performance is calm and later it becomes more and more energetic and tense as he walks around, makes hand gestures, laughs hard and shouts.

The feature begins with a title card stating that in the year 1999, the Devil visited a man known as

The Searcher, who later became The Research Director and the following is his story. Does that statement help understand the film? What follows is a man talking to himself for one hour and twenty minutes just like Free Goody and once again, it fails to be intriguing and the lack of music does not help.

Santamato's performance might be the only positive ascpect. He is convincing as he pretends he is having a conversation or being threatened by an unknown entity and he is amusing as behaves wildly, running around. Santamato comes across as a nice person and as an actor, he does seem to have positive qualities. However, is this enough to save this feature from being a dull experience? Probably not. In his review for Theoretically, An Even More Paranoid Conspiratorial Phone Call, the author states that this kind of storytelling would most likely work better as a short film, instead of a feature film and that opinion applies to Disrupted Expectations 2: Becoming the Research Director as well.