Reversion (2015 film)

Reversion is a 2015 psychological thriller film about a young woman whose memories of her dead mother are transformed by her father's technology. It opened theatrically on October 9, 2015 in select markets and stars Aja Naomi King, Colm Feore, Gary Dourdan, Jeanette Samano, David Clennon and Amanda Plummer. It was developed and distributed by Fluency, as part of NBC Universal and is a continuation of the (2014) made-for-television movie ISA.

Plot

Sophie Clé (Aja Naomi King) is a marketing executive working alongside her father, Jack Clé (Colm Feore), who invented the Oubli, a wearable device that helps its users experience their own memories more vividly. At a grassroots marketing event days before the public launch of the device, Sophie tells a crowd of women that she uses the Oubli to overcome the pain of her mother's unexpected suicide by choosing to remember how happy her late mother (Lela Rochon) was the last time she saw her.

Later that night, Sophie is kidnapped by a masked assailant who crashes into her vehicle and incapacitates her driver Ayden (Gary Dourdan) using a stun gun. Sophie is drugged and bound while her kidnapper, Isa (Jeanette Samano), calls her father to ransom code for an implant. When he warns Isa that the code can't be used on Sophie, Isa cuts into Sophie's head and connects her to a computer causing Sophie to have a flashback of her beloved memory of her mother. Upon waking, Sophie finds her kidnapper is in a trance, having plugged herself into the same computer. Using a scalpel to cut herself free, Sophie escapes.

As she recuperates in bed, Sophie's father and his colleague, Dr. Ciespy (David Clennon), assure her that she suffered no serious injuries during her ordeal. The next day, Sophie goes back to work on the imminent launch of the Oubli but has visions of her mother dying a violent death. Her father warns her that her hallucinations are a result of her using the Oubli too much but she disobeys him and uses the device again. This time she falls into a trance and claws open the wound she suffered during her kidnapping. At a hospital, the attending doctor asks Sophie if she's having memory problems due to her brain implant. Sophie denies that she has a brain implant.

Isa has followed Sophie to the hospital and corners her in a bathroom, promising to make Sophie's problems go away in exchange for the code that powers an implant that her father implanted in both of them. After a sleepless night, Sophie tries to talk to her father about what happened in the hospital but he avoids the topic. Distrustful of her father, Sophie convinces her driver Ayden to help her, saying he's the only person she can trust. In secret, Ayden leads Sophie and Isa to Elizabeth (Amanda Plummer), a scientist who used to work for Sophie's father. Isa, who has told Sophie that she's dying because of her implant, demands help from Elizabeth but the scientist admits nothing can be done for her.

Sophie is shocked to learn that her own implant lasts forever and that the Oubli she loves was created using children like Isa as test subjects. Though distrustful of Ayden, she allows him to drive her and Isa away from Elizabeth's house after he uses his gun to knock out a security guard her father had sent to retrieve the scientist. That night, a pained Isa asks Ayden to pull over and walks off into the darkness, making a tearful call in Spanish to her family. The next morning, Ayden and Sophie discover Isa's dead body, the sight of which causes Sophie to remember a violent fight between her and her parents many years earlier. Sophie recalls that her father pushed her mother violently to the ground, killing her. She demands that Ayden take her to the Oubli launch so that she can tell the world what her father did and he complies reluctantly.

Sophie gets on stage in the middle of her father's keynote to confront him but he has turned off his microphone and ushers her to a secluded room with the help of his security guards. Ayden, who had been waiting for Sophie outside, is seized by other guards.

Ending

Sophie again accuses her father of having killed her mother and he shows her a video affidavit that a younger Sophie had recorded in which she agrees to permanently alter her own memory. Sophie, agitated, calls him a liar and he shows her surveillance footage from the night her mother died which reveals that it was Sophie and not her father who angrily pushed her mother to her death. Sophie staggers away into the darkness, emerging backstage as a video testimonial plays for the audience extolling the virtues of the Oubli. Some time later, Sophie joins her father for breakfast a few feet away from the site where she once killed her mother. She appears to have no memory of the event and instead uses the Oubli to remember her mother smiling at her.

Cast

• Aja Naomi King as Sophie Clé
• Colm Feore as Jack Clé
• Gary Dourdan as Ayden
• Amanda Plummer as Elizabeth
• Lela Rochon as Maya Clé
• Jeanette Samano as Isa Reyes
• David Clennon as Dr. Ciespe

Production

The film was written by Elissa Matsueda and Jose Nestor Marquez from a story by Jose Nestor Marquez. The movie was directed by Marquez. The picture was shot by Anne Etheridge and edited by Ceci Hyoun. It was produced by Serena Films & Dangerous Media for Fluency.

Release

The film premiered in the select markets of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago on October 9, 2015.