Alpha Test
2025 · 12m · Australia
Directed by Stephen Packer
Genres: crime, sci-fi, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, provocative
A detective partners with a holographic copy of a murder victim to solve their death, but the hologram begins to malfunction and ask forbidden questions.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A detective-and-ghost-partner procedural sounds like a network pitch, but Packer flips it—the hologram isn't the puzzle to solve, it's the existential threat—and by the third act you're no longer watching a murder mystery, you're watching a malfunctioning copy interrogate its own right to exist. That's the kind of premise hijack that makes the obvious premise collapse.
The film situates itself carefully in a lineage that runs from *Blade Runner* through *Her*, but what distinguishes it is the formal restraint: Packer lets the holographic glitch accumulate in the sound design and performance before the narrative breaks, honoring the grammar of the thriller while subverting its certainties.
The key move is Packer's decision to keep the hologram's malfunction acoustic rather than visual for as long as possible—you hear the degradation in vocal repetition and timbre before you see it, and that single sound design choice makes a conceptual thriller feel inevitable instead of gimmicky.
Festivals
- Adelaide Film Festival 2025