Soldier Ryan wakes up in the back of a van with no recollection of how he got there and an imprisoned young boy beside him. He soon learns he was one of the boy’s abductors, before promptly passing out and waking up somewhere else with equal lack of memory of the intervening time. Realising he has only limited conscious time each time he awakes, he must figure out what’s going on before the blackouts consume him permanently.
While it’s an intriguing setup to have the hero granted only a small amount time to unravel each chunk of a mystery as it’s presented to him, it’s unfortunately also really the only interesting thing about the film, and aside from this stylistic gimmick the story itself isn’t all that engaging. To counter the generic narrative, each time Ryan awakes he often finds himself in a situation requiring him to punch his way out, be it involving corrupt government agents, ruthless Russian gangsters or Ian Somerhalder’s primary antagonist, Harkin, whose continued presence in many settings becomes an important plot detail.
Noel Clarke acquits himself well in the acting aspect, although his directorial style still leaves a little to be desired, principally regarding the numerous fight scenes. They frequently lurch from normal speed into slow-motion circular tracking shots as though Bullet Time hadn’t been overexposed into oblivion a decade ago, while the deceleration also makes it easier to pick out lapses in the combat’s choreography. The sci-fi setting is rendered through standard props like translucent plastic electronics and shiny visual interfaces, giving us a near-future setting that’s functional but nonspecific.
The rest of the cast are merely required to flit in and out of the story as required. Alexis Knapp as implausibly glamorous and gorgeous prostitute Dana is certainly eye-catching enough, but basically functions as a walking plot device; Somerhalder has little to do other than smoulder evilly and provide chucks of exposition; and Brian Cox remains criminally underused with barely ten minutes of screen time.
The story is more than a little reminiscent of Quantum Leap (hero wakes up in a strange place and must swiftly adapt to the temporal displacement) and Memento (protagonist struggling to figure out his past actions), but has neither the depth of the former nor the intricacy of the latter, and as a result barely has enough mystery to keep you watching.
Overall Verdict: A high-concept premise that is eventually revealed to have potential real-world ramifications, there a good film to be made from The Anomaly’s central concept. Unfortunately, The Anomaly is not it.
Reviewer: Andrew Marshall