I disagree with this review. I was told I had to pay close attention so I concentrated on every last detail (a rarity for me in movies) and was able to follow the movie pretty effortlessly. My girlfriend was able to do so with no such hint (but maybe she is a lot smarter than me.)
This movie is a THINKER not unlike the mind-bender Primer, which almost certainly requires multiple viewings and a wiki page to fully grok. Understanding these movies is not supposed to be passive (giving you exactly what you need to know when you need to know it would enable you to be a passive viewer) and when the movie is over you're supposed to be thinking about what you just saw for more than 5 minutes and on more than a superficial level.
This movie was very good at what it tried to do. It didn't get bogged down by in-depth explanation of the technology involved in dream-diving, didn't give us super complex character back-stories, and didn't overwhelm the user with technologies to that world. I felt we were provided with a set of basic building blocks (in the form of world-unique jargon) and then given a tour of a complex world based on these blocks - and it was damn cool. If it had tried to do more than his the movie would have gotten bogged down.
This movie is a THINKER not unlike the mind-bender Primer, which almost certainly requires multiple viewings and a wiki page to fully grok. Understanding these movies is not supposed to be passive (giving you exactly what you need to know when you need to know it would enable you to be a passive viewer) and when the movie is over you're supposed to be thinking about what you just saw for more than 5 minutes and on more than a superficial level.
This movie was very good at what it tried to do. It didn't get bogged down by in-depth explanation of the technology involved in dream-diving, didn't give us super complex character back-stories, and didn't overwhelm the user with technologies to that world. I felt we were provided with a set of basic building blocks (in the form of world-unique jargon) and then given a tour of a complex world based on these blocks - and it was damn cool. If it had tried to do more than his the movie would have gotten bogged down.