Immortality review: Sam Barlow's cinephile thriller is a haunting and diabolically clever mystery
Much like its unfettered sprawl of disparate video clips you are tasked with piecing together, it is difficult to know where to start with Sam Barlow’s latest extraordinary and provocative interactive thriller. Most likely it is with Immortality’s focus of attention and beating heart, the mesmerising movie star Marissa Marcel. At the tail end of the 1960s, Marissa was plucked from obscurity by lauded Hitchcockian director Arthur Fischer to play a starring role in his biblical horror Ambrosio. Tipped to be Hollywood’s next big thing, Marissa’s debut went nevertheless unreleased. As did her second film, cop mystery Minsky, before she disappeared from the limelight altogether.
Marissa didn’t emerge again until 1999, as the star of hammy potboiler Two of Everything. Only the Marissa that reappeared didn’t look to have aged a day; the first clue, but certainly not the last, that all is not as it seems with the actress and her unreleased oeuvre. Before Two of Everything was finished, Marissa disappeared again. This time seemingly for good.
Some intrepid souls have collected all the known footage of Marissa, placing it into an archive that you can comb through in the hope of figuring out what happened to her. Clips from the three movies, rehearsals, test screenings and the odd home video are unlocked by you, out of order, as you scour the footage for clues.
The game’s interface is set up as an old ‘moviola’ machine, with you able to scrub back and forth through footage at different speeds. To unlock the next clip, you can select a notable object or person on screen and ‘match-cut’, throwing up another video in which the object or person appears. Select a prop gun and you can follow a rabbit hole in which you can find every video in which a firearm appears. Click on Marissa’s face in Ambrosio and it might reveal a scene of her as a different character in Two of Everything.
Or Minsky. The order in which the videos are unlocked appears unpredictable, beyond following your match-cut cue, which creates the tangled, divergent storytelling that Barlow has made his own. Like his previous work Her Story and Telling Lies, pieces of the puzzle can be revealed almost at random, but Immortality is constructed in such a way that its twists are logical and effective in any order. Whether you are receiving the question or the answer (or at least your interpretation of the answer), new discoveries can cast previously viewed clips in a brand new light.
That kind of narrative construction remains mind-boggling. I pondered with a friend whether Barlow is a bona fide genius or creates his story and then chops it up and sees what sticks. Even if it is a little of column A and a little of column B, you cannot underestimate the staggering layers of planning that go into creating Immortality’s sets, scenes and scripts in order for it to flow into its own mechanics and mystery.
Though it isn’t without its problems, as you are likely to feel quickly lost as you are thrown between clips and asked to make sense of it all. There is a distinctly Lynchian surrealism to Immortality that some may bounce off pretty hard, but those that stick with it will find a haunting and deeply involving mystery. It is easy to lose yourself bouncing from clip to clip –match-cutting apples, crucifixes, snakes and eyeballs– in order to find a new piece of the puzzle, scrawling notes and idly pondering theories when you are not even playing. Immortality is clearly the work of a cineaste, with its filmic qualities well-executed, but its positioning as a video game –a mystery to be solved– means it hooks into the completionist part of your brain.
While Immortality and Barlow’s previous can be loosely described as ‘interactive movies’, the developer has long lauded the influence of more ‘obvious’ video games on his work. Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Galaxy may not have a clear connection to a hyper-sexual and deeply disturbing live-action parable like Immortality, but Barlow is quick to note them as influences. Even the action of scrubbing the videos, best performed with a game controller, has a tactility to it that draws you into its haunted depths.
Still, I’m not sure any of this works without the clips being expertly produced with a filmmaker’s touch. And there is real skill in both the direction and the action within, which is keen on digging into the less glamorous –and darker– elements of movie-making. Off-colour comments, on-set friction and worse all play at the peripheries. Barlow’s games have always been deliberately voyeuristic and despite most of its clips being from movies designed for public consumption, the rough-cut behind-the-scenes nature makes you feel like you are peering into something you really shouldn’t. There is a constant breaking of the fourth wall as its characters peer through the screen, where you are never sure if they are looking at the camera, the director, or you.
Every actor plays their part in this and none more so than Manon Gage as Marissa herself. She is chameleonic at times, slipping between different movie characters and the ‘real’ Marissa, who is even more enigmatic than the otherworldly provocateurs she plays. She is the star –and this will be a career-making turn if there is any justice– but all the cast pull off the extraordinary balancing act that comes with actors not only playing actors, but also guiding and leading the player with a held stare or carefully placed prop.
The issue, perhaps, is that as brilliantly as all of this is executed is that Immortality is more a mystery in which you dutifully peel away its layers. Her Story and Telling Lies felt like they had a bit more of an investigative streak, whereas Immortality can leave you clicking indiscriminately at different objects and faces in the hope of it triggering a different video than the ones you have already seen. Later on, there is an odd duality to the game, as things get weirder, more disturbing and more compelling, but you can be bottlenecked trying to find a new clip, distancing yourself from the tale as you try to force it in a new direction. A small price to pay for each player’s story being their own, perhaps, but a cost nonetheless.
But Immortality certainly gives you that leeway for your own interpretation and enough compelling mystery that its puzzle can get under your skin and spill out of the game itself. There are already some fascinating readings of the game out there and much of the fun will come in discussion and dissection. I still don’t think I have a perfect handle on what it all means, despite reaching the game’s ‘conclusion’, but I have some ideas. What I do know is that this is a brilliantly clever, disturbing and singular piece of work.
