The Latent Image

It’s clever, it’s smug and it never quite lets us have the pay-off it was dangling before us.

Writer-director Alexander McGregor Birrell gleefully creates a mysterious vibe, adding suspense and meta flourishes in each scene.

A few too many dream sequence fake-outs makes The Latent Image feel like a short stretched to feature length (which it is), but some inventive camerawork and sexually charged performances from Tonks and Clift elevate the lackluster screenplay.

The feature adaptation of Birrell's short is stylish (we love a split diopter shot!) and sexy (the murder role play scenario), though the screenplay is occasionally too reliant on dream sequences/hallucinations.