Zero Contact

Lesser-known actors elevate gimmicky Anthony Hopkins sci-fi thriller.

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I thought I was in for a rough ride when I started “Zero Contact” (now available in select theaters and on VOD). It initially reminded me an awful lot of Abel Ferrara’s “Zeros and Ones” from last year, which I absolutely detested (review here). “Zero Contact” much like “Zeros and Ones” is a movie made during the height of COVID lockdowns. Much of its footage comes from Zoom calls, surveillance videos and its characters’/actors’ cell phones. It filmed in 17 different countries, but we’re mostly contained to peoples’ kitchens, living rooms and offices.

Somewhere along the way “Zero Contact” morphs into a weird hybrid of the “Unfriended” flicks (they were doing the whole Zoom thing before it was cool/necessary and before Zoom zoomed away with Skype’s business) and … believe it or not … Gregory Hoblit’s 2000 Dennis Quaid/Jim Caviezel father-son sci-fi vehicle “Frequency.” It’s at this point that the movie began to click and became much more palatable to me.

Anthony Hopkins stars as tech billionaire Finley Hart. Finley was a brilliant businessman, but a bad dad to his son Sam (Chris Brochu, “The Vampire Diaries”), whom he largely ignored. Finley invented a device called the Quantinuum Initiative prior to being ousted from Hart Enterprises due to mental instability and then supposedly died of kidney failure.

Posthumously, Finley sends packages to Sam and four of his colleagues, prompting an online pow-wow to get the Quantinuum Initiative up and running again in order to save the world. These folks are smart-alecky tech head Trevor (Aleks Paunovic, late of TNT’s “Snowpiercer” and Disney+’s “Hawkeye”), uber-German legal counsel Veronica (Veronica Ferres of 2021 thrillers “Crisis” and “Every Breath You Take”), Japanese chief innovation officer Riku (TJ Kayama) and Swedish board of directors chairman Hakan (Martin Stenmark).

The Zoom call takes a dark turn when its participants start getting killed and killing themselves. In the midst of this insanity, Sam waffles back and forth with whether he wants to help Finley and grapples with their relationship or lack thereof.