Sensation, movie (2021)
image © GROFilm Production
Article updated: 2021.07.02
The Sensation (2021) is a contemporary fantasy mystery / thriller film. The movie was reviewed by Kadmon.
Product: Sensation, movie (2021)
Original title: Sensation
Series: -
Setting: alternate Earth
Product type: Film, Genre: fantasy mystery / thriller, Style: sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, thriller
Release: 2021.02.26
Reviewer: Kadmon, Type: Male, 40s, Preferences: Immersive, logical story, consistent setting, prefers surprises to spoilers, prefers establishing elements before referencing them
Watched: very recent (2021.03), first time
Rating: Weak (2- out of 3 points), Enjoyment: Weak (2- out of 3 points)
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This is my review of Sensation, a contemporary fantasy mystery / thriller movie from 2021. It's about a young man getting involved in a conspiracy. The Sensation film has some interesting parts, but it's really confusing, so I only recommend it to dedicated fans of the genre.
If you'd like to be surprised by the Sensation film, I don't recommend you to watch the trailer beyond 0:20, because it gives away too much of the plot.
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Review (spoiler-free) - Sensation, movie (2021)
I didn't know anything about this movie, but somehow it got on my watchlist. So one day, when I had the chance, I sat down to watch it. I didn't even know the genre. I don't remember watching the trailer for it.
The Sensation movie about a young man getting involved in a conspiracy.
The story is confusing mess of intriguing concepts. A plot is a little pointless. There are no character arcs. If you feel really bored, watching this movie might provide a little distraction. It has some interesting scenes, but it's not a good film.
There's violence in the movie, so I don't recommend it to kids or those who'd prefer to have fun without violence.
The cinematography was okay.
The characters are shallow, we don't get to know much about the main protagonist beyond his name. The supporting characters are even less detailed. The actors act in strange, somewhat wooden manners, but it might be fitting their characters. At least, it fits the themes of the story.
The music (by Neil Myers) is good, it fits the atmosphere. A reviewer called it obtrusive, and that might be otherwise true, but in this film, the fact that the loud music distracts you from the story, might be a good thing.
The sound is strange. When the main characters are talking, it's clear, but the speech of others are often muddled, as if they are talking into the microphone from a distance.
Sensation is a contemporary fantasy mystery / thriller, fans of the genre might be able to enjoy it, others should avoid the film.
My experience
I was not satisfied with Sensation (2021). The movie is a mess.
Rating: Weak (2- out of 3 points). Sensation was done professionally, but it's a bad story.
Enjoyment: Weak (2- out of 3 points). Sensation is hard to rate. It left a bad taste in me, but I wasn't bored during the film.
Rewatchability: I'm not sure. I think it's mostly the surprise of the story that makes you feel interested, but if you loved it for the first time, you might be interested in further viewings.
Chance of watching it again: Nope. I've had enough.
Chance of watching a sequel: Probably. But I'll make sure to read reviews before that.
Sensation, movie (2021)
image © GROFilm Production
Will you enjoy this?
If you like mystery or thriller movies, you might like Sensation.
If you like action thriller movies (Bourne series, Matrix), you might like the film, although there are not many action scenes in the Sensation movie.
If you can get through the first half hour of the movie still interested, from then on it gets into gear, and you might even love this.
If you don't mind illogical elements in your movies, you can enjoy this.
If you like twists in the story, you might enjoy this movie.
If you hate violence, you should probably avoid Sensation.
Watching for plot points
If you are interested in mystery stories, I think it's worth watching the Sensation movie for the plot points.
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Sensation, movie (2021)
image © GROFilm Production
Review with spoilers - Sensation, movie (2021)
I didn't really like Sensation, it's a confusing blend of ideas.
It's basically a mix of the recently released The New Mutants (2020) and Bliss (2021), with the twist of killing the main character in the end. Just like Bliss, they try to bait the audience with the sci-fi premise, but in this case, subverting the expectations can backfire.
My main problem with the film is that the way the story was told, made the whole thing pointless. Killing the viewpoint character could give the viewer a closure had it happened at the end of his character arc. But there was no character arc, and this means that probably the chosen viewpoint character was not the right one to tell this story. Or that there was no need for one specific character to follow, and we could have got the story in an episodic manner, seeing it through different eyes.
I liked the main concept, but after the end I felt that I've wasted an hour more on the story that would have been enough.
The whole criminal plot is overly complicated, and I can't see the advantage of using drugged people.
Many interior scenes are underlit. I assume the creators wanted to show us that these people are sensitive to light, but in the end, it just makes the movie harder to watch.
Cover
The cover of the movie is promising, it makes the movie look more interesting than it actually is.
The trailer
The trailer is bad. At 0:22, it gives away the end twist, while not providing anything interesting all through its runtime.
If you prefer spoilers, it's still not a good trailer for the Sensation film. If you prefer to avoid spoilers, it could ruin the movie for you.
Promise of the first scene
There's going to be some international secret service plot, done by professionals.
Execution: We do see some of these secret service people in the background, but we don't get to know their goals. Instead we see the drug induced hallucinations of a random guy, who gets executed in the end.
Plot summary / Synopsis
There are people on a train. When the train stops, most of them get off. A man (Alastair G. Cumming as Dr. Marinus) enters the train, who is greeted as a doctor. It turns out that those who stayed on the train, belong to some secret organisation. They talk about a situation in Russia, that needs urgent intervention. One of them is black, he seems to be dosed with some chemicals by the doctor. (By later references, I assume this happens some time before the next scene.)
A young man (Eugene Simon as Andrew) is in an office, waiting for the results of his DNA test. The doctor enters, and acts in an antagonistic manner, hinting on some secrets about his mother. The young man storms out of the office. The doctor tells one of his man to follow the young man.
The young man smells something strange on his way back home. He sniffs the test results, and then he sees a red haired woman (Jennifer Martin as May) on the street, before she disappears in the crowd.
The young man tries to get information about his heritage, as it seems to him that there are no relatives of him beyond his mother, as his father vanished years ago. He thinks that something is happening to them. His mother calls him on the phone, and tells him to drop this research, so he burns the DNA results.
The doctor rings his doorbell. He doesn't open the door, but follows the doctor through the empty streets. The doctor flashes a light into his eyes, then a man attacks him. The young man reacts as if he has super-human reflexes and fighting skills, easily disarming the attacker. The young man is asked to join the organisation, and he complies.
In the facility he is greeted by the trainer (Emily Wyatt as Nadia). He gets his own room. There are four other participants (Yuri, Rebecca, Quin, Shaan). Someone leads him to a photo of his mother. At a meeting they tell the young man that there are people with specific DNA pattern, that can be altered to gain additional, often super-human abilities. It is also revealed that there are others who hunt for people like them. The red haired woman join them for training.
The red haired woman changes the stimuli of the young man to feel as if he is travelling on a bus. She asks him to find a way to realise that this is not real. He does (although I don't know how). They get trained in different simulated situations. One of them (Shaan) doesn't pass a test, and gets kicked out of the program.
The red haired woman reveals to the young man that both of his parents were part of the program, and she thinks that his father died when he helped his mother escape from the facility.
All of the students get abducted by the main trainer, and get executed by shooting them.
We are back in the office of the doctor, at the beginning of the film. He seems to remember some parts of what happened, but he forgets it quickly.
The trainer visits him at his home, and introduces herself as a police officer. She show him photos of the dead bodies of the rest of the students, and tells him that his DNA was found at the scene of murder. She tells him that he spent 5 hours in the building, while he only remembers it being a couple of minutes.
He starts to remember a different version of the events we had seen before. He was drugged, and taken to the facility, where he was restrained, just like the others. He was constantly drugged, while hallucinating about the events. He was given a gun, and he shot the others. The red haired woman enters the room, and they tell him that the drugs made him susceptible to their suggestions, and he did whatever they told him to do. They tell him that they pretended to work for the police as they wanted to test how much does he remember about the events.
They bring in Shaan, who is drugged, and shoots the young man. It is revealed that the young man was a designated target.
Plot summary / Synopsis of the reality
The story is the same until he arrived home. By that time he is under the influence of the drug, and starts to hallucinate. When the doctor rings his doorbell, they tell him to follow them, and he complies.
He is taken into the facility, where he is strapped in a wheelchair. There are four other people, who are also drugged. One of them (Shaan) is taken away from them. The rest of the drugged people are taken to a field, where the trainers put a gun in the hand of the young man, and make him shoot the other three. Then they take hair samples to throw around the corpses to make it look like he did the killing.
Then he is taken back to the doctor's office, and the doctor acts as if it was the first time they have met. The effects of the drug seem to be worn off. The young man walks home.
The trainer arrives, and pretends to be a police officer. She wants to know if he remembers anything from the previous events. When she deduces that he does, the red haired woman steps in, and they tell him everything. Then they get him killed by another drugged man (Shaan).
The setting
It is set on contemporary Earth. I'd say somewhere in the United Kingdom.
Sensation, movie (2021)
image © GROFilm Production
The reality
In the Nazi concentration camps they've found a drug, that made people susceptible to suggestions. (Probably people with a specific DNA pattern.) Nowadays the evil organisation uses this drug to use people as scapegoats during assassinations. The drug must be administered regularly to keep the drugged people in the trance.
The fictional setting
There were conjoined twins that gained the ability to feel the sensual stimuli of the other. They started to research this in Nazi concentration camps, and after a lot of inhuman research, they found out that there's a specific DNA pattern, that allows this. The doctor found that with some additional technological enhancements, super-human abilities can be gained by people with these genes. (The specific enhancement method is probably needs to be calibrated to the individual.)
These people are able to receive extra-sensory information. They theorise that there might be people who can even send false information into their brains. (I'm not sure why they just theorise this, when the red haired woman can do exactly that.)
To be able to change the senses, the sender has to touch the receiver.
There are three groups, lead by the three doctors from the concentration camps.
- Dr. Marinus is probably the least evil, he has his students trained in the research facility.
- Dr. Kimura's people still use the methods they did in concentration camps.
- Dr. Forrester
The message of the story
I'm not sure there's one. "Don't trust companies with your DNA test results"? "Nazis are bad"?
The structure of the story
The scenes of the Sensation film are mostly sequential, with some flashbacks in the end. There is no real structure to the story, after the introduction, there are some things happening, then there's an abrupt ending.
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Things I liked
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How does it compare to the other works of the creators?
This is the first film from the writers (Magdalena Drahovska, Martin Grof) I have seen. I'm interested in their future works, because this movie had some interesting scenes, although the overall story was not great.
This is the first movie I've seen from the director (Martin Grof). The direction was average, but it was okay.
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Sensation, movie (2021)
image © GROFilm Production
Analysis of the story - Sensation, movie (2021)
I liked the concept of the story, but the execution was so bad it prevented me from enjoying Sensation.
Problematic elements
The title: In the end, the word "Sensation" doesn't really describe the situation. It could have worked if they went with the imaginary setting.
(Edit: The title "Sensation" is so nondescriptive, that by the time I've started to edit my review a couple of monthes after I've watched it, I totally forgot everything about the movie, I didn't even know what's Sensation about.)
Problems with the structure: Why did we spend watching the hallucinations of the young man for an hour when it didn't really relate to the story?
The main character was not really introduced to the audience. As we don't get to know him, we don't start to feel empathy towards him. This means that through the story we don't care what happens to him, and in the end, seeing him die doesn't cause any emotions.
For an imaginary setting to work, and to allow the audience to understand the parallels, there needs to be a foundation for the imaginary reality. If a larger part of the beginning of the movie had shown us the young guy reading about secret conspiracies that rule the world, or thinking that he is special, with some special talents, or that he has belief in supernatural abilities, his hallucinations could have been a great addition to the story.
Some shots were too long. In the beginning, I hoped that it would build up to something, but in the end, I've seen they just tried to pad the time.
Problems with the plot: Why does the organisation use untrained people as killers, when it would be a lot more efficient to use trained killers. We see that in their trance they are almost unable to move. How would they be useful to track and kill someone?
If they wanted to kill him anyway, why did they bother with the whole charade? They let him out of the office, then sent the trainer, spent multiple hours with speaking to him, just so they shoot him dead in the end.
If they wanted the three others dead, why didn't they just kill them? Why did they drug them, and kept them in the facility? They could have just shot them, put the young man's hair on them, and be done with it, it seems unneccessary to bring all of them out for that.
Unanswered questions
What's with the smell of the DNA results? A whole scene was spent on it, but I couldn't see the point of that.
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Possibilities of improvement
How it could have been better?
Start the story with the protagonist, showing us his life, his beliefs and his dreams. In his search of knowledge about his ancestry, he visits the doctors's office to make a DNA test.
Then suspicious things happen, as the doctor's people start to investigate him, follow him. He is called to the office to get the results, and then the story could be the same. (Although this still doesn't get him a character arc, introducing him will probably help the audience to understand the protagonist better, and they'll maybe feel closer to him.)
The evil organisation kidnaps and drugs the people so they won't have an alibi. They don't need to commit those crimes, they are just in a drugged state (probably with some date-rape drug), so they don't remember anything, while the organisation handles the crime. Most of the story would work better with thos plot device, including the 5 hour gap they were talking about in the end. (This still doesn't get a character arc, though.)
The protagonist could have something that is not very important for him in the beginning, but in the end he is ready to die for that. For example, he could have a child from a girl he separated from (or probably an illegitimate child, that he didn't take on his name, to make it harder to find the kid). In the beginning, the kid pesters him that he wants him to come to his birthday party, but the young man avoids that. During the film he is able to hide from the organisation the fact that he has a kid. During the story, he hallucinates about his child, and realises, that he is actually important for him. In the end, when he finds it out that the organisation is looking for people with his DNA profile, he lets them kill him, as he is afraid that if he were alive, he would let them know he has a kid. This would make his death meaningful, and it could be a good resolution to the film.
If I could come up with these ideas in a couple of minutes, one would think that a screenwriter could do a better work.
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Sensation, movie (2021)
image © GROFilm Production
Uses for the film - Sensation, movie (2021)
Plot
- An evil group uses a drug to take people into a trance, to make them scapegoats for criminal acts.
- There are people with potentials for special abilities, that needs some kind of awakening to activate.
Alternative plot:
- An evil group works as a DNA testing company, and uses the DNA to implicate test subjects as scapegoats for criminal acts.
Scenes
- Some of the hallucinated training scenes look good.
Scenario ideas - Role-playing game scenario ideas
- The characters are hired by an organisation to recruit people with potential for special abilities. They have to find ways to awaken their abilities, but each of them require individual methods for that. For the sake of an interesting game, these should be stressful events, that involve life threatening situations, but they have to make sure their target survives each of these.
Scenario ideas - Wargame scenario ideas
- There is an enemy base. Agents of another force have to sneak in, and put something in the room of their target. They also have to make sure that their target survives the scenario, otherwise their work is moot. The target starts the game in his room, but they can lure him out with some distraction. Each of the agents have the device they can plant in his room, they need d3 turns to find the right place, while there can't be enemy forces in the room. The device will let them do something useful - it allows them to listen to the target, or it might infect the target, or allow them to send subliminal suggestions to the target. It might be a magical spell cast on the room for a fantasy game.
- To make it harder, only one of the agents have the device. If he is taken out, another agent can get the device from him.
- In a battle, they have a special agent with a device / power, that works by touching the target. This agent has to reach and touch the target to complete the mission. The touch will allow them to do something useful that involves the target (for ideas, see above). As a secondary mission, the agent - who is also important - has to retreat to the starting zone, before the game ends. If the game system doesn't have rules for touch attacks, just fight for serious injuries, make it easier for the attacker, or make it harder for the defender. Depending on your idea, armour can still work against the touch, if you decide that the agent has to touch bare skin. The agent might need to cause a wound first, so he can touch the skin of the target if it is fully armoured.
- An agent got into the camp of the enemy, and affected some of the soldiers with a device / power. The affected soldiers now take commands from any authority figures, not just the leaders on their own side. If the agent gets close enough (they are on the same zone), and they are not occupied by a previous command, he can give them commands, that they will follow for one turn, even if it is to attack members of their own team. The affected soldiers can be chosen by the player of the agent before the setup, or they could be chosen randomly (for example, the agent put the poison in a barrel of wine, but he can't make sure who drank from it). The agent can either sense who is affected in the beginning of the game, or he needs to come close to them to see the symptoms, or he might not know anything, and has to give them commands to find it out.
Miniatures - 1/50-1/60 (28-32mm scale)
Civilians: Human-sized (S3) modern (advanced) human female / male civilian.
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Similar stories - Sensation, movie (2021)
Movies
Bliss (2021): An ordinary man is recruited by a woman to be a junkie, then he hallucinates that he has special abilities.
Jumper (2008): A young man with special abilities learns that the world is ruled by secret societies.
Koma / Coma, movie (2019): A young man is recruited by a group, where he learns the true nature of reality, and learns special abilities. The organisation is being run by evil people. Coma is a better story.
Matrix (1999): An ordinary man is recruited by a group, where he learns the true nature of reality, and learns special abilities. Matrix is a lot better.
The New Mutants (2020): An organisation recruits people with special abilities, who are taken to a facility. The organisation is being run by evil people.
Wanted (2008): An ordinary young man is recruited by an organisation, where he learns that the world is ruled by secret societies, and learns special abilities. The organisation is being run by evil people.
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Frequently asked questions - Sensation, movie (2021)
Is the Sensation film based on a book or comics?
No, Sensation is not based on either books or comics.
Is there a post credit scene in Sensation?
No, there's no post credit scene in Sensation.
Where can I watch Sensation online? Is Sensation available on Netflix? Is Sensation on Amazon?
As of 2021.07.01, Sensation is on Amazon.
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Resources - Sensation, movie (2021)
Official
Sensation: Official article.
Information
IMDB: Sensation (2021): Database article.
Letterboxd: Sensation 2021: Database article.
Rotten Tomatoes: Sensation 2021: Database article.
Reviews with no spoilers - Sensation film (2021)
Josh Batchelder (for Josh at the Movies): Film Review: Sensation: Review video about the Sensation film with no spoilers.§
Reviews with spoilers - Sensation movie (2021)
Brian Skutle (for Sonic Cinema): Sensation: Review article of the Sensation movie, with spoilers.
Dark Discussions: Science Fiction Film SENSATION (2021) Comes April 16, 2021: Review article of the Sensation movie, with spoilers.§
Francis Nash (for The Upcoming): Movie Review: ‘Sensation’: Review article of the Sensation movie, with spoilers.Ł
Gavin Spoors (for Filmhounds): “Why Would Anyone Stay Here?” – Sensation (Film Review): Review article of the Sensation movie, with spoilers.§
Kenny Nixon (for mxdwn): Movie Review: ‘Sensation’: Review article of the Sensation movie, with spoilers.Ł
Maryam Philpott (for The Reviews Hub): FILM REVIEW: Sensation: Review article of the Sensation movie, with spoilers.
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Buying the product - Sensation, movie (2021)
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Have you seen the Sensation film? How do you like the movie? Would you recommend it to others? Do you know reviews or resources you'd like to add? What further thoughts do you have about it? Tell your opinion in the comments!
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