The Anomaly.

Director:	Noel Clarke
Country:	UK
Year:	2014
Running Time:	95mins
Principle Cast:	Noel Clarke	Ryan
	Ian Somerhalder	Harkin Langham
	Brian Cox	Dr Langham
	Alexis Knapp	Dana

Noel Clarke is a busy man! Not only is he the producer on another of 2014’s EIFF World Premiere’s, We Are Monster (2014) but he is the director and lead actor in the Sci-Fi thriller The Anomaly (2014). This genuine British cinematic jack-of-all-trades was also in attendance to introduce and take a Q&A following the screening of this ambitious attempt at that rare animal – a well-made British science fiction drama.

Clarke plays Ryan, a traumatised ex-soldier who we first see in the back of a moving van with a young boy called Alex who apparently is also held captive. Ryan’s life seems to be subjected to disorientating bursts with a short duration of nine minutes and 47 seconds! Now what you have got to remember is that your watching a sci-fi drama that is set in the future (5 to 10 years according to Clarke, though at times it seems more) and one that’s extremely complex which means that this blogger did not completely follow what’s going on – but then this genre is not something I always appreciate?

That busy man Noel Clark.

During the Q&A it was explained that the basic premise behind the story is the mind control of people through fear - fear, bio-technology and the fight between good and evil, again I’m not sure who represents good and bad because the father and son team of Brian Cox and Ian Somerhalder who I thought were the villains were really not evil after all but only wanted to save the world – but I suppose there are a lot of evil people about that want to save the world, at least their own version of it!

But don’t get me wrong this low budget movie with its big budget feel, is well made and I would agree that it does give the mega budgeted American genre movies a run for there money. It’s both fascinating and entertainingly physical with some great slow motion fight sequences, which have been choreographed and are as good as any you will see using computer-generated imagery and as Noel Clarke explained he used trained fighters in the film to capture the reality of the situation. He also explained that he prefers to work with people he can trust, a cast that produces a certain quantity of acting and from his own experience as a director allows him to stretch a ‘budget’. Its obvious that Clarke and his cast worked very hard, bringing us a movie that involved working a six day week for a five week shot, but they ended up with a piece of work that has a lot going for it and one that its director can be proud of.