{"id":12721,"date":"2026-08-22T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/?p=12721"},"modified":"2026-08-15T14:17:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T14:17:47","slug":"the-camera-never-lets-him-escape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/the-camera-never-lets-him-escape\/","title":{"rendered":"The Camera Never Lets Him Escape"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>7 Minute, 7 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>

MOVIE REVIEWS
\nDisremember<\/strong>
\n –     <\/p>\n

Genre: <\/strong>Psychological Thriller, Drama, Experimental
\nYear Released: <\/strong>2025, 2026
\nRuntime: <\/strong>1h 25m
\nDirector: <\/strong>Matthew Simpson
\nWriter: <\/strong>Matthew Simpson
\nCast:<\/strong> Matthew Simpson
\nWhere to Watch:<\/strong> TBD<\/p>\n

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RAVING REVIEW: <\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>DISREMEMBER asks Matthew Simpson to spend much of its 85 minutes alone on screen, but his involvement extends far beyond the performance. Simpson also wrote, directed, shot, and edited the film, taking on responsibilities that would normally be divided among several people. That alone makes the production an ambitious undertaking. What matters more is that the finished film rarely calls attention to how much of it rested on one person’s shoulders.<\/p>\n

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Simpson’s unusual production method initially threatens to become the story surrounding the story. Knowing one person made an entire feature invites viewers to inspect every shot for evidence of how it was made, especially once the camera begins moving with Rob rather than remaining locked to a tripod. DISREMEMBER gradually gets past that curiosity. The mechanics stop demanding your attention because they serve the increasingly unstable perspective of a man who no longer trusts his own memory.<\/p>\n

Rob is an alcoholic and former soldier whose marriage appears to have reached its breaking point. A birthday card from his wife, Janine, leaves him confronting a future he doesn’t want, and then the cracks begin. He finds himself in his former military friend Jack's apartment, unsure how he got there. Time disappears. His surroundings change. Explanations become harder to accept because Rob can’t determine whether the danger exists somewhere around him or inside his own mind that's refusing to cooperate.<\/p>\n

There are obvious precedents for a mystery built around damaged memory, and DISREMEMBER doesn’t pretend otherwise. The trick is finding a visual style that makes Rob’s uncertainty feel direct rather than simply giving the audience another puzzle to solve. Simpson uses surveillance footage, point-of-view shots, close-up camera movement, and sound to keep the movie inside Rob’s experience. The apartment becomes increasingly uncomfortable because there are so few places for either Rob or the camera to escape.<\/p>\n

That environment could have exposed the production’s resource constraints. Instead, confinement becomes beneficial. Corners of the apartment take on different meanings depending on what Rob believes has happened there. At the same time, CCTV cameras offer the possibility of objective evidence in a story where a memory becomes useless. His decision to record himself is especially effective because it creates a parallel between two versions of reality. The life Rob believes he’s living and whatever exists when he can’t remember it.<\/p>\n

Simpson also understands that technology alone can’t sustain the movie. Once Rob begins searching for evidence of his own behavior, the footage could easily become a repetitive series of discoveries followed by increasingly frantic reactions. The performance keeps those scenes from becoming one-dimensional. Simpson allows exhaustion to accumulate. Rob doesn’t simply become frightened as his situation worsens; frustration, shame, anger, and desperation begin competing for control.<\/p>\n

That matters because addiction and trauma could have been reduced to devices for an unreliable narrator. DISREMEMBER occasionally gets close to that, particularly when its mysterious workings take priority over the emotional consequences that follow. The better passages treat Rob’s condition as something painful rather than interesting. His inability to remember isn’t presented as a superpower for withholding information from the audience. It’s destroying what remains of his ability to understand himself.<\/p>\n

Anyone familiar with memory-based psychological thrillers will begin testing theories early, and a few of the revelations are easier to anticipate than the movie seems to expect. Simpson occasionally underlines an idea after the visuals have already made it clear. A little more trust in the audience would have made certain scenes stronger, especially once the fragments begin falling into place. The editing has to create confusion without becoming incoherent, and Simpson finds a workable balance between the two. Blackouts interrupt Rob’s sense of continuity without turning the entire film into an arbitrary collection of disconnected moments. Enough survives each break to let the audience keep rebuilding its understanding alongside him.<\/p>\n

The sound is equally important. Isolation isn’t quiet here. Small noises, changes in volume, and Rob’s own presence make the apartment feel inhabited even when only one person appears on screen. Subjective audio adds another layer to the uncertainty because hearing something doesn’t automatically mean there’s something there. Combined with the surveillance material, the film keeps shifting between objective evidence and an experience we have reason to question.<\/p>\n

The solitude also creates an interesting relationship between form and subject. Rob is attempting to understand himself without the normal certainty provided by others, while Simpson made the movie without the normal creative safeguards of collaborators. That parallel doesn’t need to be forced into some grand statement about suffering for art. It simply gives the film an identity that wouldn’t exist if the same screenplay had been produced in the normal way.<\/p>\n

There are places where another perspective might have helped. A collaborator could have challenged some of the more obvious dramatic choices, trimmed a repeated idea or two, or pushed the emotional parts further away from familiar psychological-thriller territory. Solo filmmaking provides complete control, but complete control also means nobody is standing nearby to question you. DISREMEMBER occasionally shows both sides of that freedom.<\/p>\n

The accomplishment becomes easier to appreciate because Simpson doesn’t rely on novelty alone. The movie has atmosphere. It has a committed lead performance. Its visual approach serves Rob’s deteriorating sense of certainty, and the structure reveals enough information to maintain interest without explaining everything. Even viewers who knew nothing about the production could reasonably watch it as a tense independent thriller and come away satisfied. Learning afterward that the same man in front of the camera was also responsible for virtually everything happening behind it changes the scale of what you’ve just watched.<\/p>\n

DISREMEMBER has already received festival recognition, and it’s easy to understand why. Independent filmmaking is often discussed in terms of doing more with less, although “less” usually still means some combination of cast, crew and outside assistance. Simpson reduced that equation almost to its endpoint and discovered that the restriction could become part of the film rather than merely an obstacle to completing it.<\/p>\n

The result isn’t flawless, and calling attention to the one-person production shouldn’t require pretending it is. Some of the mystery feels familiar, until it doesn’t; a few dramatic ideas overexplain themselves, and the script sometimes explains feelings the performance has already conveyed. Those are meaningful limitations in a movie asking its audience to remain in the dark for much of its running time.<\/p>\n

They’re also relatively small compared with what Simpson manages to sustain for 85 minutes. DISREMEMBER begins as the kind of project whose making is almost inseparable from the finished film. By the end, the best compliment is that you don’t need the behind-the-scenes story to justify watching it. The film survives independently of its incredible production history, and that makes what’s already there considerably harder to forget.<\/p>\n

Please visit https:\/\/linktr.ee\/overlyhonestr for more reviews.<\/p>\n

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[photo courtesy of MATCHA MOVIES]<\/em><\/p>\n

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MOVIE REVIEWS Disremember  –      Genre: Psychological Thriller, Drama, Experimental Year Released: 2025, 2026 Runtime: 1h 25m Director: Matthew Simpson Writer: Matthew Simpson Cast: Matthew Simpson Where to Watch: TBD RAVING REVIEW: DISREMEMBER asks Matthew Simpson to spend much of its 85 minutes alone on screen, but his involvement extends far beyond the performance. Simpson also wrote, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/img\/0367\/0367582.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t