Directed by Luke Momo and co-written with Davis Browne, I can’t fault the premise of Capsules, and some of the cinematography (macro shots especially) are excellent. It just needed a little more time, and management of such.

Dev (Caroline Potter Shriver), Maya (Kate Pittard), and Ryan (Davis Browne) are students of chemistry at what appears to be a fairly advanced level. Studying together and reaching something of an impasse, they hit on the notion of offering the right bait in the form of some allegedly hefty marijuana to renowned antisocial boffin Jasper (Marcus Fahey), who it’s rumoured has the study plan to end all others. When Ryan is sent out to find and tempt this aloof but intellectually superior chap, the added lure of tacos and a relaxed social atmosphere eventually succeeds, and the two begin to make their way back to the others.

En route, they catch sight of an elderly local gent (David Dotterer) passed out in the road, and assist him to his feet. Only when he waves away further offers of help and staggers off do they realise he’s left a vial of medication behind. Their attempt to inform him of this falling on deaf ears, they instead pocket the mysteriously unmarked capsules and head home. After an earnest book-bashing session, the three more laid back friends introduce various intoxicants into the mix, inciting straight-laced loner Jasper to join them. Their own resources eventually exhausted, they take the next logical step to keep the party going, which is of course to neck the old man’s unknown drugs. There follows a period of The Exorcist-esque vomiting (I’m almost positive they used the same brand of pea soup), then a dreamy soul searching circle session before Ryan and one of the girls seek out somewhere more private.

Up till now this was a decent, fairly well-paced, acceptable story. Then things fall apart in spectacular fashion as Ryan appears to suddenly die, and whilst Maya attempts CPR as he lies on the bed (students of science at this level should be more than aware of the importance of having the casualty on a hard surface for this to be anywhere near successful), Dev bursts in and suddenly deduces he’s died because of the strange meds and needs more to revive him.

Here’s where I stopped having faith in Capsules. There were errors already; we know all students are prone to partying, but to collectively gobble down unknown and obviously non-pharma drugs they lifted from an incoherent man lying in the road to keep the party going? And then to suddenly deduce the solution for one of their number karking it is to take more? Nah. Sorry. Too much of a ridiculously short cut for me.

Things go from bad to worse and the plot drifts apart in the manner of landmasses separating at the dawn of mankind.  This would definitely have made it as a short, but for a feature length production it pips itself at the post and dies 5 feet off the starting blocks. Promising start; if it’d carried on in that vein it could’ve won me over totally. Sadly, it didn’t.