JACKRABBIT Review

Release Date: March 25, 2016 (VOD Platforms)
Director: Carleton Ranney
MPAA Rating: NR

Set in a dystopian ’80s-style future, the techno thriller Jackrabbit is a very compelling film in concept, but uneven pacing and the ultimately lackluster storyline keep this thriller from truly achieving its potential.

Loaded with big circuit boards, CRT monitors and puffy vests, Jackrabbit features a lo-fi ’80s aesthetic, taking place somewhere known as City 6, where society is struggling to move forward after a “reset” crushes civilization’s technological advances. Accompanied by a pulsing synth score, it’s clear which decade writer-director Carleton Ranney drew his influence from when crafting this world – to great effect, as this proves to be one of the film’s most endearing characteristics.

Josh Caras stars as Simon, an expert hacker who gets a job at VOPO, the city’s top tech firm and the company that’s basically running everything since the reset. After a friend and fellow hacker, Eric (Ryan Dailey), commits suicide, Simon is approached by another, more anarchistic hacker by the name of Max (Ian Christopher Noel), who received a mysterious hard drive from Simon’s friend before he ended his own life. Now, the two need to work together to decipher the message on the drive and find out why Eric died.

Simon, who now works for the corporation Max is rebelling against, must balance this moral dilemma and decide where his allegiance lies. Max, on the other hand, stays on the fringe of society, never trusting VOPO and yearning for something more than what lies within the city walls. The film devotes a lot of time to the relationship between these two characters and what motivates them, making the film as much of an indie drama as it is a cyber-thriller.

It’s the blending of these two styles that become problematic in regards to pacing. When Simon and Max make a discovery, or have VOPO hot on their trail, the excitement and intrigue ramps up; but as soon as that happens, the scene ends and we cut to another seemingly irrelevant interaction between Simon and his father or Max battling with his drug addiction. There are so many plot threads in Jackrabbit, and each is meant to further the story, enrich this world and develop the characters, but it never fully coalesces into the ambitious narrative it wants to be.

The production value, however, is never a letdown on this film. Ranney’s futuristic world feels like if Wargames took place in the ’80s version of the future. Everything looks like it’s a repurposed version of something else, weathered and just barely functional. For being a low-budget indie, this movie looks very impressive and proves once again that budget does not necessarily dictate how good a film will look.

It’s unfortunate that the plot of Jackrabbit just didn’t cine together, as it has so many other strong attributes, but this was a tough one for me to get through as I just was struggling to keep my attention on, or even care about, what was transpiring onscreen. Fans of indie sci-fi will appreciate the aesthetic, and the basic story setup is intriguing, but just don’t expect a tension-filled standoff between Matthew Broderick and a computer program designed to launch nukes.