The British sci-fi film Voidance offers a charming but flawed answer to an unlikely question: what if someone remade 2011's Source Code in a rundown Wetherspoon's? Directed with low-budget inventiveness, the film stars Zoe Cunningham as mumsy anti-terror agent Alana Toro, who receives orders from a hologrammatic James Cosmo to track down a rebel group. Her mission stalls when she enters a bar for interstellar truckers, where a time-loop device forces her to repeatedly interrogate the same skeleton crew and solve a convoluted murder mystery.
B-Movie Ingenuity
Flickers of B-movie creativity catch the eye throughout. Jamie Foote's grimy, greasy set design conceals budget limitations, creating a palpably physical, non-pixellated space. Ciéranne Kennedy Bell's costume design dresses the troupe in cyberpunk finery that blends Red Dwarf with Claire's Accessories. The score by Christoph Allerstorfer and James Griffiths sounds far more expansive and assured than the production suggests. Alana Toro herself is a promising pulp creation—a leather-clad, purple-wigged Miss Marple who occasionally wields a space blaster—though Cunningham, with her air of a school secretary uncovering a tuck shop scam, seems miscast.
Problems That Torpedo the Film
Several issues undermine Voidance. The title itself carries an unfortunate intestinal ring. The setup relies on clunky expositional dialogue, and the time-loop conceit fails to engage. A repeated PA announcement becomes as annoying as "see it, say it, sorted," and a wristwatch constantly spells out what the direction fails to make clear. This very British vision of the future is cramped, impoverished, and something of a drag. Voidance is available on digital platforms from 25 May.
