Sight: Extended (2023) Review

What if instead of reading a self-help book or seeing a shrink, you could turn to AI, VR, and AR to make targeted improvements in your social life and interpersonal relations? What happens when AI becomes so good at projecting human traits that it can manipulate troubled people?

Sight: Extended, a small-cast drama with modest SFX work, presents a compelling story. The film succeeds at being rooted in contemporary problems while projecting the near future, where tech becomes ever more invasive.

The setup of the story may create some anxiety. The live-action scenes are peppered with computer graphics. The protagonist Patrick is a salesperson living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He moons over a picture of his high school crush at Half Moon Bay beach. These details are hallmarks of James Nyguen, the director of infamous movies like Birdemic.

Fortunately, co-writers and directors Daniel Lazo and Eran May-Raz have produced an engaging low-budget drama with a well-paced script loaded with intriguing ideas and some convincing performances. At first, you may have a little trouble with the superimposed graphics, but they are good enough to accept.

Patrick suffers from agoraphobia, the fear of going outside, and lives in isolation. He works as a telemarketer in his dark little bungalow. His free-time activities are video games and porn. Sometimes his vacuous hipster sister comes by to hit him up for money.

In the near future Patrick lives in, people can choose to get implanted AI lenses for VR interactions. Instead of a Zoom call, Patrick’s agoraphobia support group is a VR event, with the participants appearing in his living room.

Patrick makes a Faustian bargain from this artificial connection to the outside world. Only he’s too naive to see the Faust part. Patrick leaves behind his paralyzing agoraphobia for a new, gamified virtual reality. Venturing outside, Patrick begins to become a more fully realized person.

Once Patrick passes this threshold, Sight: Extended scans more like a neo-noir, as the profoundly flawed loner tempts fate by chasing after his unrequited love.

The story draws drama out of the encroachment of invasive tech primarily by showing the introverted Patrick’s increasingly bold attempts at social acceptance.

But the near future is filled with more than just gamification. Convincing bots, online scams, and alienation also thrive in this new environment.

Lazo and May-Raz have created a small film with relatively smooth-looking production values. But the superimposition of computer graphics and backgrounds sometimes betrays the movie’s humble Kickstarter origins. In the credits, many images are sourced to Unsplash and Creative Commons.

Lead Andrew Riddell shows stamina, keeping his intensity while being onscreen in almost every scene, greenscreen or not. Riddell rides Patrick’s tide of emotions with conviction. Deborah Aroshas is a welcome distraction in her brief visits as the shady hipster sister.

With AI developments happening so fast, it’s difficult to predict what the near future will look like. But Sight: Extended’s toxic intersection of technology with psychology, self-help, and scams is a frightening vision. Scary because these areas all seem like plausible next steps for the application of AI.

The title Sight: Extended is an inside joke and pun. Lazo and May-Raz explored the concept of AI-infused lenses and interpersonal relationships in their 2012 short, Sight.

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