When Apple’s Vision Pro headset was having its moment in the public consciousness, there was a ton of pushback that was way overblown and hyperbolic. Apart from its exorbitant price (which is undeniable), there were comments that made it sound like wearing it was like wearing some medieval torture device, and that it was a symbol of a bleak dystopian future where we’re all shut-ins, jacked into the dark solitude of cyberspace, completely cut off from our loved ones, pets, and the wonders of nature.
In practice as an early adopter, the only thing I’ve found isolating about it is that when I do see something genuinely cool on it, I know that there’s going to be a limited audience who’s even capable of seeing it. Mostly because of that exorbitant price.
A perfect example of that is Remnants, a 30-minute horror movie written and directed by Ti West for the Apple Immersive platform.
So far, I haven’t been blown away by any of the Apple Immersive projects, because while they’re all well-done, the ones I’ve seen have felt mostly like novelties. You do get the queasy feeling of vertigo from watching a woman walk a tight rope across an impossibly deep chasm. It is neat seeing the streets and rooftops of Paris as a bunch of parkour experts leap across the architecture. And I imagine it’d be neat to be close enough to Metallica to see every pore, bead of sweat, and hair on the faces of the artists, but I’m not into Metallica enough to want to find out. There’s one fiction project that I know of, about people in a submarine, and I’m sure that the format will get across the tension and claustrophobia in a way that traditional movies can’t, but I’ve never been particularly compelled to check it out.
But a ghost story: that I can get into. Remnants is set in England sometime during the Edwardian period, I’m guessing, and it stars Lucy Boynton as the representative of a bank assigned to assess the remnants of the estate of a recently-deceased noble woman. She’s there on behalf of her husband, who’s suffering from some sort of consumptive disease that causes him to have sudden episodes of extreme close-up jump scares. At the start, she’s trying to convince the estate’s caretaker, played by Ralph Ineson, to guide her through the old mansion. When he refuses, she decides she’ll just go by herself.
What’s so remarkable about Remnants is that it simply wouldn’t be as effective in any other medium. I don’t think it’s spoiling anything to say that the story is very straightforward and old-school, and it’s filled with every haunted house movie trick in the book. But it’s a simple story executed to the absolute fullest extent. The production design is flawless, the performances are perfect, the visual effects are (mostly) seamless, and every single shot works to establish atmosphere and tension.
It starts with Boynton and Ineson’s characters at a table in a dark pub in front of a fireplace, and it’s both the perfect introduction to an old-fashioned ghost story, and an ingenious way to ease the viewer into an immersive-format short film.1As an indication of how immersive the movie is, I’d originally typed “ease the player” without noticing. You’re placed into the room as a silent observer, aware of the other patrons in your periphery, instinctively wanting to look around and explore your space, but also your attention is drawn to the speakers. There’s a vague sense that those other patrons aren’t just background extras; you’re one of them. Like in a traditional movie, a private conversation has been presented exclusively to you as an omnipresent observer; but at the same time, you’ve been cast as someone in a pub who’s eavesdropping on a heated conversation at a nearby table.
I don’t want to get too hyperbolic with it, but I did keep getting that energizing feeling of what it must have felt like as cinema first departed from recording stage productions, and started experimenting with what the camera could do that made it unique to the new medium. Partly because I was immediately engaged in the story — this doesn’t feel like a novelty or a tech demo — I got the feeling of a team breaking cinematic storytelling down to first principles. It’s not like traditional movies, since you’re there in the room, but it’s also not like immersive theater, since the filmmakers can command your focus and put you in any position they want. Even, or especially in this case, places you would not have chosen to go on your own.
As somebody who’s spent decades engaging with video game storytelling, and years seeing how much of that does or doesn’t translate naturally to VR, I noticed how many of the “fundamental rules” are broken in Remnants. The camera abruptly cuts between setups. Some of the camera positions are slightly tilted, enough to be disorienting without being nauseating. And the camera will often do a slow pan or a push through a space, which I’ve always assumed would be forbidden, to avoid motion sickness. I was surprised by how well it all works.
The movie isn’t made with 360-degree cameras, but instead an angle more like 180 degrees. If you look behind you, you’ll just see the scene dissolve into blackness. But there’s always something just outside your range of peripheral vision. Meaning that you naturally watch what the camera is currently focused on, but you’re also constantly looking around for anything that might be lurking in the shadows. Which is, of course, perfect for a story about a haunted house. It’s not a story told in the first person, but instead often feels like you might be one of the ghosts.
And I’ve got to praise how the movie’s paced, which is a huge but subtle part of how that effect works. Shots go on for much longer than they would in a traditional movie, often with several seconds passing before our protagonist enters the frame. It’s essential to let us get our bearings, but also imbues a sense of anticipation throughout the movie, as we’re always wondering exactly why the camera is holding on this shot, scanning the periphery to find out exactly what it might be showing us. I can’t imagine this would feel anything other than dull and padded in a traditional movie, even a 3D one.
But Remants is thoroughly, and unapologetically, a horror movie, meaning that the building sense of dread comes from anticipating the moments that you’ll see something horrific in your periphery, which will inevitably jump out and getcha. The movie is absolutely not above throwing in old-school 3D jump scares. But they are all hell of effective.
It’s not even like the VR horror games I’ve tried2With the caveat that I haven’t tried many, and never for very long, because they freak me out, largely because you’re ceding any sense of control. You’re not the protagonist, you have no agency in this story apart from watching what happens, but you’re not an impartial viewer, either. You’re right there in the room. And the camera can cut at any moment to show you exactly what the protagonist is seeing. There are plenty of times I’ve had an effective jump scare in a traditional movie. None of them have ever given me the full-body electric tingling jolt that the ones in Remants do.
Those moments are closer to a haunted house attraction than a movie or video game, but even when I’ve been in those and had an actual person inches away from my real-world face trying to scare the shit out of me, it’s never been the same level of biological flight-response terror. Again, it felt like taking things back to the fundamentals of cinema, and enjoying the simple fact that the camera can be anywhere and do anything.
Which all goes back to my opening paragraph. It’s impossible for me to watch this and not be excited about the potential of an entirely new medium. Not the future of entertainment, obviously, but a future, instead of just being the novelty branch I’d kind of dismissed it as being. This is the first thing I’ve seen in a long time that felt like an entirely new art form — not just from its content, but from its execution. All the money and talent and imagination went into this project, and it shows.
And it’s a drag to realize that its audience is inherently limited, because the tech (and budget) that makes it possible is still out of reach for most people.
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