Discontinued (2022)

**Red Pill? Blue Pill? Screw that, just take all the pills!**

This is another entry in the small but growing sub-genre of movies that are outwardly similar to The Matrix, but secretly mock the hell out of it.

First off, casting Langston Fishburne as "The Guide" was genius! He really does look a lot like his father after all, and when we first see him, it almost seems like he does a (intentionally bad) Cowboy Curtis impression.

Sarah reminds me a lot of Enid from Ghost World. In a way this movie is to Millennials what Ghost World was to Gen X. And here comes the spoiler; both movies have a main character that's depressed and at odds with society and ultimately fails in her struggle to find a place for herself in our flawed, competitive society and both movies don't really SHOW their main character committing suicide at the end and instead show them heading off into some wondrous distant land by themselves where they can finally be alone and find peace, but if you can read through the subtext; they really committed suicide.

In Discontinued this is reinforced by the title itself and of course by the actual scene of her committing suicide. So I have to correct myself, cause this movie actually does show her commit suicide (when she swallows the entire pill bottle) it's just that we kinda gloss over it, because after that Fishburne pops up and guides her through the matrix. But if you think about it, the whole matrix stuff only starts to happen after she already committed suicide.

And also, the whole movie is basically a loop. It begins at the its own end and ends at its own beginning and yet the movie stays in chronological order. How is that possible? It's because Sarah is in a loop. She killed herself and now she is basically in purgatory, reliving her 5 "greatest" memories over and over again for all eternity or until she is finally able to make the choice to face society and face other people and face her own inner demons that those other people represent.

Jul 28, 2023