Future Boys
2023 · 10m · USA
Directed by Julian Clark
Tones: contemplative, dark, surreal
A permanent tenant of virtual reality inside a future farming facility receives a rogue transmission that disturbs his synthetic existence and pulls him toward something stranger than the simulation he's chosen to inhabit.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Clark does the thing nobody else would dare: makes you *want* to stay inside the nightmare, wraps body horror in genuine tenderness, and plants it all in a farming facility like he's daring you to find profundity in the most unglamorous corner of sci-fi. It shouldn't work. It does.
The film locates itself thoughtfully within the lineage of dystopian VR cinema while resisting its moralizing—the editing rhythm between synthetic and organic imagery demonstrates a considered hand, and the formal choice to anchor philosophical dread in agricultural infrastructure shows real curatorial intelligence about setting as argument.
The transmission sound design—that moment when the external world breaks through the VR's sterile hum—is the hinge the whole film turns on, and it's such a precise, economical choice that it elevates what could've been a familiar premise into something that actually *feels* like waking up inside a dream you want to keep.
Reviews
Sci-fi short done right — visually striking and surreal cinematography.
Freaky hopeful nihilism — body horror sci-fi with grotesque imagery.