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‘Zero Contact’ Review: A Token of the Times

Rick Dugdale’s thriller, shot over Zoom early in the pandemic, stars Anthony Hopkins as an eccentric tech genius. It was previously released as an NFT.

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By Amy Nicholson

It seems that innovation is everything to the director Rick Dugdale. In May 2020, while many people were still learning to bake sourdough , Dugdale began to shoot the techno-thriller “Zero Contact” over Zoom. Last year, the director released the movie, a modestly amusing flick, as a nonfungible token, or NFT . “Zero Contact” stars Anthony Hopkins as Finley Hart, an enigmatic engineer and genius whose death is reported in the opening credits. Hart leaves behind hours of recorded video logs filled with twisty, seemingly half-improvised monologues, which give the impression that his tongue can’t keep up with his brain.

While Hart was alive, he spent decades developing teleportation technology. Bad things will happen if the machine he left behind implodes. The conceit is to make this familiar ticking-time-bomb plot take place on computer screens. An unseen spy watches Hart’s estranged son (Chris Brochu) and feisty former employees panic during an emergency virtual meeting, and taps into their cellphone and security cameras. Every few seconds, the image glitches, apparently for added realism.

Hopkins’s character is a routine riff on the aloof tycoon. “I lost touch with my humanity,” he quips, “boohoo.”

There’s a vicarious pleasure to be found in watching Hopkins, the octogenarian actor, getting the hang of technology that allows him to film himself without the usual hovering crew. Indeed, the behind-the-scenes footage that plays over the movie’s end credits is as engaging as its plot. “Who’s that on the left?” Hopkins asks, pointing at a corner of his video-call frame. Told that it’s the screenwriter Cam Cannon, Hopkins beams. “Hey, I’m sorry,” he says, “I hope I didn’t take too much liberty with your writing!”

Zero Contact Rated R for a grisly moment of violence. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV , Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.

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Anthony hopkins in ‘zero contact’: film review.

The Oscar-winning actor stars in this pandemic-produced thriller, shot almost entirely on Zoom, that is also the first feature film NFT.

By Frank Scheck

Frank Scheck

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Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly and filmmakers gotta make movies, even in the midst of a global pandemic. That’s the main takeaway from Rick Dugdale’s directorial debut, shot during worldwide COVID lockdowns. Whether certain movies gotta be made is another matter entirely. Starring Anthony Hopkins , seemingly appearing from his own living room, as a mysterious tech entrepreneur named Finley Hart, Zero Contact doesn’t exactly make you nostalgic for the days you spent mostly on Zoom. In the production notes, director-producer Dugdale says, “We hope the time for this is … now.” Leaving aside the question of why the ellipses were necessary, it seems safer to say that the time for this is past.

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This high-tech corporate thriller, seemingly shot entirely on Zoom and surveillance and cellphone cameras, is apparently desperate to prove its cutting-edge bona fides. Its marketing breathlessly informs us that it’s “the very first film being offered as an NFT on the Vuele platform and is also the very first feature film NFT.”

Zero Contact

Release date : Friday, May 27

Cast : Anthony Hopkins, Chris Brochu, Aleks Paunovic, Veronica Ferres, Martin Stenmarck, TJ Kayama, Lilly Krug, James C. Burns

Director : Rick Dugdale

Screenwriter : Cam Cannon

(This review will now pause so those of you who care about such things can take the opportunity to purchase the film’s NFT because, what the hell, it can’t be a worse investment than the stock market right now.)

Done? OK, where were we? Oh yes, we also learn that Zero Contact was shot in 17 countries, although why that should matter is debatable because the film is hardly an Around the World in 80 Days -style travelogue but rather an up-close-and-personal portrait of indoor rooms. When there’s a shot of someone’s backyard, it’s positively a thrill. Then there’s the notion that the sound mix apparently employs ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response), although the only tingling viewers are likely to experience will come from the relief that occurs when the film’s over. Finally, there’s the idea that it represents a new genre, “remote footage” (as compared to “found footage”), which is something that really, really needs to be nipped in the bud.

That the film features a storyline of sorts seems almost an afterthought. It revolves around a video conference call engineered by Hart (think Elon Musk, only with actual charisma), who doesn’t let the fact that he’s dead prevent him from setting the plot in motion. The call features five people from various locations, one of whom is Finley’s estranged son, Sam (Chris Brochu). It seems that Finley, who had been ousted from his own company shortly before his death, is imploring them from beyond the grave to reactive the “Quantinuum Initiative,” which apparently involves teleportation, before the world ends. Or something like that. Let’s just say that “The machine runs on dark matter reactor” is one of the script’s more coherent lines.

The film isn’t entirely a talkfest. Very bad things happen to some of the online participants during the call thanks to mysterious intruders, possibly because they were upset at not being invited to participate (much like several of my relatives). Even more horrifyingly, every once in a while, the callers are put on hold and we’re subjected to repeated listenings of “Escape (The Pina Colada Song),” which represents the polar opposite of ASMR.

As Finley, Hopkins displays his usual magnetism, even taking the opportunity to play one of his own musical compositions on piano. He delivers alternately concerned and bemused monologues throughout, although his tendency to look almost anywhere other than directly into the camera is distracting. Still, it’s a pleasure to listen to him expound about such subjects as the mind-blowing effects of reading Aldous Huxley in that elegant voice.

Featuring no less than 10 minutes of end credits that include behind-the-scenes footage meant to impress us with just how complicated it was to put the project the together, Zero Contact is just the first installment of a trilogy, the other two parts of which are now filming. Would it be rude to point out that the vast majority of us have relievedly moved on from spending our days doing nothing but looking at screens?

Full credits

Distributors: Lionsgate, Grindstone Entertainment Production company: Enderby Entertainment Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Chris Brochu, Aleks Paunovic, Veronica Ferres, Martin Stenmarck, TJ Kayama, Lilly Krug, James C. Burns Director: Rick Dugdale Screenwriter: Cam Cannon Producers: Peter Toumasis, Rick Dugdale, Cam Cannon Executive producers: Sean Keller, James Agnew, Hakan Karlsson, Daniel Petrie Jr., Don Monaco, Dan Fellman Director of photography: Edd Lukas Production designer: Tink Editor: Hakan Karlsson Composers: Klas Wahl, Anders Tiska Casting: Todd Ireland

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‘Zero Contact’ Review: The Zoom-Shot Movie Subgenre Dies Yelling

Anthony Hopkins is the name lure in a convoluted contraption too transparently slapped together to make a movie during COVID lockdown.

By Dennis Harvey

Dennis Harvey

Film Critic

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The mild initial curiosity stirred by Zoom-shot movies died quickly, because so few of them were watchable, and because filmmakers quickly found workarounds to create more fluid entertainments while still observing COVID precautionary measures. Thus “Zero Contact” arrives as a novelty that’s already more than worn out its welcome, aiming for dubious additional distinction as “the world’s first star-powered feature film NFT.” (It was released in that form last September — whether anyone actually purchased it as such is unknown.)

We’ll just gingerly step around that factoid, as the aptly named “Zero Contact” has plenty of more tangible ways in which it is a steaming pile of nada. Producer turned first-time director Rick Dugdale and screenwriter Cam Cannon’s would-be thriller has five globally-scattered protagonists yelling at their screens during a conference call in which the fate of all humanity supposedly hangs in the balance from some murky high-tech threat.

All telling, no showing, the tediously convoluted opener for a planned trilogy is not at all brightened by intermittent appearances from Anthony Hopkins , the principal “star power” here. It’s hard to believe any viewers will return for two (presumably non-Zoom) in-progress sequels once they’ve waded through this Lionsgate release.

Popular on Variety

Opening fictitious news footage encapsulates the career of Finley Hart (Hopkins), “enigmatic” genius behind an Apple-like tech empire he was eventually ousted from. Already widowed, he then purportedly died of kidney failure, orphaning a now-adult son (Chris Brochu as Sam) he pretty much ignored while alive.

Thus the junior Hart, caring for a baby at home while his wife is out of town, is not particularly pleased when a mysterious package delivery prompts an online meetup with four other people currently or formerly tied to Hart Enterprises: Snarky tech chief Trevor Williams (Aleks Paunovic) in Seattle; humorless German legal rep Veronica Schultz (Veronica Ferres); Japanese “chief innovation officer” Riku Matsuda (TJ Kayama) in Japan; and board of directors chair Hakan Nordquist (Martin Stenmarck) in Sweden.

They’ve been called upon in order to reactivate the Quantinuum Initiative, some kind of machine based on Finley’s “singular truth” discovery that was apparently shut down by his foes within the company. Just what it is or does we never quite figure out, though terms like “alien technology,” “AI,” “teleportation” and “resetting the space-time continuum” get tossed around. It is also said that if it is not reactivated pronto, “a globe-killing disaster event” will ensue.

Well, that certainly sounds momentous. Not enough so, however, to effectively distract us from being stuck with five quarrelsome strangers on a Zoom call. Soon one of them is dead, while the others suffer home invasions and other threats from the project’s shadowy enemies. To the extent that we see these things happen, we do because the protagonists carry around their devices to film themselves, for no obvious reason. Or perhaps (as onscreen graphics suggest), those devices are filming them without their knowledge. None of which makes “Zero Contact” any less a movie about a bunch of people talking conspiratorial nonsense while acting very hard at appearing frightened.

Needless to say, that places the performers in a bind, having to run gamuts of urgent emotion in a static contextual vacuum. They (also including some subsidiary figures, including spouses) cope variably well under the circumstances. Arguably the worst showing is by Sir Anthony, whose arbitrarily scattered interview flashbacks and video messages have him delivering improvisational-sounding gobbledygook with the twinkle-eyed self-indulgence of a veteran performer certain his every tic and utterance will delight. It’s a particularly awkward assumption to be so wrong about.

“Contact” means to set up an epic, globetrotting puzzle combining elements of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Matrix,” coincidentally also both trilogies. But there isn’t a moment here that doesn’t scream “COVID-necessitated contrivance,” or takes on a convincing narrative life of its own. While some thought went into production designer Tink’s settings, the notion that this film was shot in 17 countries plays as a worthless gimmick, since we’re almost entirely trapped in rooms with characters’ laptops and phones. Klas Wahl and Anders Niska’s mostly electronic score tries to whip up high tension around onscreen events that stubbornly refuse to become exciting in the least.

And just when you think this nothing-burger can’t get any more exasperating, it spends a full 10 post-fadeout minutes on final credits. Oh, there’s more: As names crawl by, we are meant to be impressed by behind-the-scenes footage showing cast and crew applauding one another’s wizardry in making a Zoom movie. It’s enough to make you nostalgic for the simpler times of watching paint dry.

“Zero Contact” opens May 27 in 13 U.S. theaters, simultaneous with digital and on demand launch.

Reviewed online, May 23, 2022. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 96 MIN.

• Production: A Lionsgate release of a Lionsgate, Grindstone Entertainment Group, Enderby Entertainment presentation. Producers: Peter Toumasis, Rick Dugdale, Cam Cannon. Executive producers: James Agnew, Sean Keller, Hakan Karlsson, Daniel Petrie Jr., Don Monaco, Dan Fellman. Co-producers: Ardy Brent Carlson, Matt Zogaric, Bryan Sullivan.
• Crew: Director: Rick Dugdale. Screenplay: Cam Cannon. Camera: Edd Lukas. Editor: Hakan Karlsson. Music: Klas Wahl, Anders Niska.
• With: Chris Brochu, Aleks Paunovic, Veronica Ferres, Anthony Hopkins, Martin Stenmarck, TJ Kayama, Lily Krug, James C. Burns, David Beatty, Linda Darlow, Rukiya Bernard, Angella Kostic, Adrian Holmes, Osman Aboubakr.

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Zero contact, common sense media reviewers.

Language, suicide in pandemic-set sci-fi thriller.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

While film is technically set in several different

Suicide by hanging. Suicide by gun. One lead char

Reference to masturbation in the comments section

Strong language throughout, including "f--k." Also

Woman shown passed out in bed with wine bottles ar

Parents need to know that Zero Contact is a 2022 sci-fi thriller in which former family and co-workers of a late Big Tech genius are contacted by an AI program to reactivate a possibly deadly program. It was filmed during COVID quarantine, and much of the "action" takes place among characters scattered around…

Diverse Representations

While film is technically set in several different countries, most "action" takes place as characters teleconference. Some ethnic and racial diversity.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Suicide by hanging. Suicide by gun. One lead character is found shot in the head with a message for the other characters written in black Sharpie. Two characters try to hide from what seems to be a home invasion. Jump scares.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Reference to masturbation in the comments section of an internet post.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Strong language throughout, including "f--k." Also "bulls--t," "bats--t," "s--t," "d--k," "a--hole," "bastard," "goddammit," "crap," "hell."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Woman shown passed out in bed with wine bottles around the bed. Wine drinking. Beer drinking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Zero Contact is a 2022 sci-fi thriller in which former family and co-workers of a late Big Tech genius are contacted by an AI program to reactivate a possibly deadly program. It was filmed during COVID quarantine, and much of the "action" takes place among characters scattered around the globe who are having what amounts to a Zoom meeting. Violence includes suicide by hanging and by gun, and a man is found dead with a bullet in his skull and a word of warning written on his forehead. Characters hide from what seems to be a home invasion. The movie has jump scares as well as wine and beer drinking. Strong language throughout includes "f--k." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

In ZERO CONTACT, Finley Hart ( Anthony Hopkins ) was an eccentric computer science genius whose company made billions before his behavior led to him being forced out prior to his death. After he died, Hart's estranged son Sam (Chris Brochu) and others who were part of Hart's inner circle in the company are scattered around the globe. They're contacted by a mysterious AI program, and when the five of them meet through a teleconference call, they're asked by this AI program to restart one of Hart's programs known as the "Quantinuum Initiative." However, some in the group are reluctant to do so, as the program, with its connections to quantum physics and dark matter, is just as likely to destroy the world as save it. Also, some in this teleconference are being attacked by mysterious home invaders determined to get them not to restart the program. Now, Sam and the rest must find a way to figure out if it's in their interest, and in the interest of humanity's survival, to restart the Quantinuum Initiative.

Is It Any Good?

This is an unsuccessful attempt to make a movie out of a Zoom meeting. Zero Contact , out of ambition, necessity, or both, tries to tell a story through film in the middle of the COVID quarantine, and it doesn't take long to see the limitations in the form. The "show don't tell" maxim is yet another victim of the pandemic, at least in this movie, and so much time is spent explaining backstories and relationships and all the things that were usually explained through action in the Before Time, it's easy to empathize with one of the characters who keeps walking away from the Zoom meeting to pour herself another glass of wine to get through it.

The limitations inherent in telling a story through film via Zoom meeting are obvious, and the attempts to get around this problem through the action that actually does take place don't really clarify the story. It's confusing. There are sci-fi words and terms like "dark matter" and "continuum" peppering the dialogue, something about time travel, attempts at humor via the 1970s soft-rock staple "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" by Rupert Holmes. One of the more tense moments of the movie concerns one of the characters threatening to smash their computer with a bass guitar, and viewers can't be faulted if they entertain the idea of wanting to do the same thing to their screen out of the frustration of watching a movie that tries to do the best with what it has to work with in the middle of a global pandemic, but completely fails.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the challenges of trying to make a movie like Zero Contact in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Was this movie able to tell the story and show action, or did it seem limited due to the quarantine? Why?

How is this similar to and different from other movies centered on the potential dangers of technology?

Did the violence seem necessary to the story, or was it excessive? Why?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : July 5, 2022
• Cast : Anthony Hopkins , Chris Brochu , Veronica Ferres
• Director : Rick Dugdale
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Lionsgate
• Genre : Thriller
• Run time : 97 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : Some violent content and brief language.
• Last updated : December 27, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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‘Zero Contact’ Film Review: Anthony Hopkins Zoom-Call Thriller Lays a Goose Egg

Shot remotely via the COVID-19 lockdown, this sci-fi stinker offers little beyond technobabble and exposition dumps

Some movies transport you from your dreary, everyday existence into a fascinating world of excitement and wonder. And then there are films like “Zero Contact,” which make you wish you were taking out the cat litter or regrouting the bathroom tiles instead of watching it.

“Zero Contact” stars Sir Anthony Hopkins as Finley Hart, a billionaire technology guru who, at the start of the film, has already died and left his mysterious final project, “The Quantinuum Initiative,” unfinished.

After his death, a group of people directly connected to Finley are summoned to a mysterious video chat, where they are told to input their secret codes and activate the Quantinuum Initiative. It’s a process that should take all of 45 seconds, but they have an hour to do it, because first they have to dump a metric ton of exposition, debate each other’s motives and get picked off by a mysterious killer with digital artifacting where their face should be.

The folks on the call are Finley’s favorite computer hacker Trevor (Aleks Paunovic, “Hawkeye”), Finley’s lawyer Veronica (Veronica Ferres, “Love, Weddings & Other Disasters”), Finley’s tech expert Riku (TJ Kayama), Finley’s executive co-worker Hakan (Martin Stenmark), and Finley’s estranged son Sam (Chris Brochu), who wanted nothing to do with his father and needs everything explained to him in elaborate detail constantly.

The reason why none of these true believers and reasonable skeptics won’t just enter their codes is because they don’t actually know what the Quantinuum Initiative is supposed to do. It might save the world. It might end the world. Then again, not inputting the code might very well end the world too. Maybe it has something to do with spatial anomalies. Maybe time travel is involved. Heck, maybe Finley is still alive.

Anything could be happening, even though technically — for the vast majority of the movie’s runtime — absolutely nothing is. Threats are poorly established and barely explained. Sci-fi concepts are introduced, but it’s unclear how they’re affecting the story, who is manipulating the technology, and what they’re even doing in the first place.

All we know for sure is that “Zero Contact” is a film about five poorly defined characters debating whether or not they should do something that’s also been poorly defined. It’s a lot like the second season of “Lost,” where the characters all debated about whether or not they should “push the button,” except there’s no pretense of entertainment value. It’s only a tedious back and forth.

Meanwhile, Sir Anthony Hopkins occasionally butts into the movie via interview clips where he opines about the difference between science and art and why he doesn’t like labels. If there weren’t a couple shots of Hopkins speaking directly into the camera about the plot of the film, you’d be forgiven for thinking his scenes were completely unrelated to the production and spliced in all willy-nilly.

“Zero Contact” is one of several motion pictures that were produced during the COVID-19 lockdown, when everyone had a lot of time on their hands, but the only way to make a film was online. Rob Savage’s “Host” was an excellent example of how this could work to a filmmaker’s advantage, telling a simple story with sharp characters and thoughtful commentary on the real-life events that led to the film’s distinctive style. Stephanie Laing’s “Family Squares” attempted, earnestly but with somewhat less success, to capture the complexity of maintaining meaningful relationships and sharing major life events when physical proximity was impossible.

“Zero Contact,” the directorial debut of producer Rick Dugdale, written by Cam Cannon (“Deadlock”), makes no direct reference to the pandemic, nor does it have any meaningful thematic ties to it. And while the filmmakers were clearly under no obligation to do so, by ignoring the elephant in the room, “Zero Contact” can’t successfully justify their Zoom-call storytelling gimmick. There’s no narrative reason for this film to be as confined, as stilted, or as amateurish as it is.

And since there’s no good reason to tell a conceptually complicated sci-fi story through a series of talking heads, most of whom can only vaguely allude to the plot they’re trapped in, “Zero Contact” suffers from a deadly case of terminal pointlessness. There’s no reason within the story for the story to be told this way, and so the film can only come across like a hollow gimmick. The pandemic feels like an excuse to make a movie cheaply, not a reason to make a movie, nor a meaningful obstacle to be overcome in order to tell a story that had to be told.

It’s hard to produce a film like “Zero Contact” and carefully manage the cinematography, provided by Edd Lukas (“Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase”), so it’s understandable that most of the movie looks like a Zoom call with drab backgrounds and mixed-bag framing. Attempts were reportedly made to incorporate ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) into the audio track, but it’s hard to quantify just how successful that experiment is, except to say that it doesn’t seem to have made the movie more engaging — or, worse, perhaps it did make the movie more engaging, but this is simply as engaging as “Zero Contact” can get.

What does stand out in “Zero Contact” is the score by Anders Niska and Klas Wahl, but not because it tells the story very well. Instead, it creates an incessant filter between the audience and the film, so that every moment in the narrative has to fight its way to the audience through a hazy aural mishmash of non-specific tension. It’s as though Niska and Wahl knew that, for the most of the movie, nothing was happening, and that when things did happen they were deeply confusing, and the best they could do was perpetually suggest a generic sense of portent.

And then of course there’s Hopkins, who adds a heck of a lot of respectability to these proceedings. He would have added a heck of a lot more if he’d actually interacted with any of the other actors, but instead he seems to have been invited to shoot his entire part like a series of cameos, to be added into the movie later when it needed a boost in personality. Hopkins can’t help but elevate the film whenever he’s on screen, but he’s given so little to do, and such claptrap to say, that it doesn’t make much of a difference in the long run.

There’s no denying that the production of a film like “Zero Contact” was complicated and that everyone involved is at least trying to make lemonade out of lemons. But when all is said and done, the lemonade doesn’t taste good. It’s a film full of boring conversations, daft sci-fi conceits, and confusing suspense, which add up to practically nothing. “Zero” indeed.

“Zero Contact” opens in US theaters and on demand May 27.

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Zero contact blu-ray review.

Zero Contact (2022)

Genre(s): Suspense Thriller Lionsgate| R – 97 min. – $21.99 | July 5, 2022

Date Published: 06/30/2022 | Author: The Movieman

Lionsgate provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this Blog Post. The opinions I share are my own.

Check out some more 1080p screen caps by going to page 2. Please note, these do contain spoilers .

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Zero Contact: Trailer 1

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