Remote Control
2018 · 7m · USA
Directed by Donovan Fulkerson
Tones: tense, theatrical
An unsuspecting top-secret research employee is thrown into a fight for his life when he encounters a mysterious cat burglar wielding a piece of stolen technology.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A cat-burglar-vs-guard premise dressed up in sci-fi window dressing—exactly the kind of competent genre exercise that makes you wonder why you're watching instead of something genuinely strange. The stolen tech twist doesn't subvert the heist formula, it just decorates it.
Fulkerson understands the grammar of kinetic action cinema and the spatial logic of single-location confrontation, staging a formally precise scuffle that respects both the heist and sci-fi traditions it's playing in. It's assured craft, though it doesn't quite aspire beyond competence.
The real work here is in how Fulkerson uses the confined space and the mysterious tech as a *dynamic object*—not just a MacGuffin, but something that physically and temporally complicates the fight itself, making a seven-minute budget stretch into something that feels architecturally complex.