What starts as a John Doe case for Samantha, a down-and-out detective, will put her entire world into upheaval before she knows it as she must redefine her reality and discover the truth of what really happened. Tethered is a sci-fi mystery set in the present day that’s heavy on drama and indulges in its own “artsy” style, with the thriller and sci-fi elements taking a back seat.

Tethered has a slow open, at first displaying itself as a character drama slowly revealing hints of the mental struggles of our protagonist. Before too long a body shows up and the story begins to take a detour from audience expectations when Samantha collapses after succumbing to an unseen force and her mental state begins to erode. This is when Tethered hits you with yet another pivot, charging the audience to wonder if our heroine is slowly descending into madness, or if there is a hole in time and space itself. Each chapter reveals a different level of ‘truth,’ a different level of time and space–the other side of the wormhole.

Tethered was made on a micro-budget with a crew of friends and proves anyone with passion (as well as a half-decent credit score) can make a movie. By using a medium sized cast each character manages to feel distinct and mostly well developed, with some wonderful performances from our heroine Caroline Harris, Connor Keene as boyfriend Kevin Ferris, Curtis Fortier as Michael Jensen, and Joshua Kwak as Detective John Keller. According to writer/director Gregg Furuoka, making his directorial debut, “I follow the indie spirit from those filmmakers before me. I’d call it the ‘Go out there and do it’ mentality to make something that is different, imaginative, bold, weird, and honest…”–I’d say he succeeded.

The creative team makes some great lighting choices to create a good colour palette, in addition to very tight and clean cinematography. However, sometimes the visual aesthetic of juxtaposing the different timelines works, other times the effect comes across as jarring. The story has some interesting Black Mirror qualities to it and the cop/mystery aspects work well, though the slow dramatic scenes really slam the breaks on the pacing. Tethered also makes use of some very nice locations.

Tethered takes a dramatic, arthouse route as its method of exploring crime sci-fi and does a good job of exploring time, even if it takes a while for the thriller genre aspects to kick in. The wait does pay off when the screenwriting and direction get to shine. This is an impressive debut for writer/director Gregg Furuoka and leaves me excited for his future work.

7 out of 10