Intervention is a puzzle game.

It starts as a cliche: she wakes up in a blank, grey room with no memory of where she is or even who. There’s nothing in the room to give her any insight except a bottle of pills and a computer. Well of course, turn on the computer, right? And there’s a video of herself, telling her she’s 19-year-old Laura (Amber Doig-Thorne) and she has a form of amnesia that resets every day, and to look for clues on the computer to start to figure things out.

She starts looking through sound clips, images and virtual sticky notes when there’s an incoming Zoom-style video call. Four women come up on the screen and sing “Happy Birthday” with some gusto and very little rhythm.

And from there our protagonist must figure out the truth. Throughout, there are a few odd points, things she isn’t noticing, things her “friends” say that might be taken more than one way, and the viewer begins to suspect that nothing is what it seems.

This is a puzzle movie. A sort of electronic epistolary found-footage mystery that takes place entirely through the lens of her webcam and the screen of the computer. (“Epistolary” is a fancy word that just means a story told through letters, news clippings, diary entries and that sort of media. Just showing off, really.) There are clues everywhere, for the viewer as much as for the protagonist.

The room and overall cinematography are very stark. Even the backgrounds of the callers seem manufactured — each with a back wall and a light source in view. The sound is minimal. It must have been very cheap to shoot: just webcam images and a few audio and video clips. The most complicated filmmaking is probably the virtual desktop and fakey websites (no branded Google or Facebook).

As a long-time virtual performer, I do have to note that the actors do a good job and are wise enough to act to camera, not looking off to the video screen. This is a technique for anyone wanting to connect with their viewers or to seem sincere, even in a work call. Looking at the image of the person you’re talking to makes you look disconnected or disinterested. I have googly eyes taped to my camera to remind me to do this when I perform.

Intervention comes across as a copypasta or Alternative Reality Game (ARG) that could be presented as a website. In fact, it’s interesting they decided to make this a movie at all.

Is this horror? Probably not, but a thriller, perhaps. It is more of a puzzle-solving film, where the chief mystery is “What the heck is going on around here, anyway?” It encourages the viewer to try and figure it out, and even when you guess right, it’s still interesting and surprising enough to keep watching.

9 out of 10 Clues