In the future, everyone has been turned into Vulcans. This seems like a perfect role for Kristen Stewart, but she isn’t playing an emotionless drone, she’s playing someone who has a disease that makes her experience emotions. She meets Nicholas Hoult, who is a ‘normal’ person who contracts the disease and falls madly in love with Kristen.
This is a mixture of two standard story types, 1) the star-crossed lovers and 2) someone different hiding from all the normals. Equals is basically an art film episode of the Twilight Zone. There are hints of other great love stories, it has a feel of Romeo and Juliet and The Gift of the Magi.
Equals looked very good. The locations and clothing were very futuristic. The acting was confusing, but I think that is what they were going for. It was a very good looking film. And yet, I didn’t much care for it.
The world that we see is sterile and clean. Everyone appears to have their own apartment and they have all the food and all the puzzle time they want. Since they are all emotionless robots, there are no TVs or books or other people. So they spend their alone time playing a form of Tetris. This is odd since our heroes both work at some kind of publisher. One is a writer and one an illustrator. I was reminded of the man from HER who made a living by writing letters.
The film isn’t so bad until you run up against a few cliches and you can then see where the story is going. After that, it’s kind of pointless to watch as everything falls into place like one of our heroes puzzles. If the film had started with the closing scene, it might have been an interesting story.
