Review of The Discovery (2017)
Seen in 2020.
In the two years since a neurologist claimed to have discovered evidence of the mind leaving the body at death, 4,000,000 people have killed themselves on the assumption that the discovery is of some afterlife resembling Christian Heaven. This is not actually supported by the evidence, and not true. Burdened by guilt, the neurologist, one of his sons and a jumpsuited cult have been trying to “finish” his work and give a more complete picture, on video.
The premises closely resemble Brainstorm (1983), where a video recording of a subjective afterlife is also made. Brainstorm was a thriller and a spectacular Trumbull showcase for new hi-fi cinema technology, whereas The Discovery is only a low-key drama-mystery. Its afterlife tape is lo-fi, in shaky black and white. Both films have the characters’ personal problems colliding with new technology, quickly veering off the subjects of science and philosophy, never to return.
The acting is a bit better in this later film, the character interplay seemingly influenced by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). Jesse Plemons as the mumbling Toby is especially good. Alas, director McDowell has none of Gondry’s imagination. The cult never makes any sense, nor does the theft of a corpse. Almost a million people killed themselves in 2017, without any “discovery”. The writers assert that Thomas Harber’s vague claim would double that rate, and fail to address why Duncan MacDougall’s 1907 “21 grams” claim did not, and why Christianity does not. The last act reaches for a belated peripety but falls flat, placing an omniscient version of Isla on a ferry to explain that it’s all just reincarnation between something like the many worlds of quantum physics, with leaking memories, for undescribed moral purposes: Cowardly and naïve science fiction.