Fantasia International Film Festival 2023 – With all of the stories about AI’s rapid advances, it’s not difficult to imagine the premise of Restore Point coming to pass, specifically a way to cheat death by uploading your consciousness and personality every 48 hours. Yet, like most sci-fi thrillers, the world of director Robert Hloz‘s feature debut is anything but ideal. There’s class inequality and violent crime. Hloz has a well-crafted film on his hands that may be his calling card for future Hollywood assignments.

Restore Point takes a fair amount of time establishing its premise and rightfully so. Set in 2041, in an unnamed, though Czech-speaking European location, the film builds a world where both class inequality and crime are so bad that the government socialized the restore point technology, allowing any citizen to resurrect themselves after an unnatural death, as long as they stick to the 48-hour back-up rule. However, not everyone is a fan of this technology. A group named River of Life opposes the tech, killing people to make their opposition known. When a head researcher named David (Matej Hádek) and his wife end up murdered, signs point to the River of Life.  Steely police agent Em (Andrea Mohylová) is assigned to the case. Oddly, Restoration CEO Rohan (Karel Dobrý) isn’t too keen on cooperating. This becomes clearer later, after one knotty conspiracy theory after another unfolds.

Partially what grounds the film are the character arcs. For Em, this case is personal. River of Life activists killed her husband. Her only remaining connection to him is a hologram. Through a round-about narrative, David returns from the dead and helps Em with the case. He, too, grieves and wonders what he could have done differently as a husband. In a flashback, you learn his wife wanted a kid, but he always put work before family.

In terms of aesthetics and concepts, this film warrants comparisons to the Bladerunner universe. Like that world, Hloz’s feature juxtaposes flashy holograms beside dreary skies, smog, and hideous factories. It’s a grim landscape that makes the world feel more dystopian than anything else, even if humans invented tech that allows resurrection following an untimely death. Is this really a world anyone would want to live in? The film also bites off quite a bit, and at times, the various narratives and conspiracies feel slightly overwhelming, but never impossible to follow. It’s simply a film that requires one’s full attention. In terms of ethical issues here, there are a few, but it really returns to that classic Frankenstein premise about humans trying to control death and nature and the adverse consequences that follow.

Restore Point proves that Hloz has major talent. Don’t be surprised if he pushes past the Czech Republic’s borders and lands Hollywood gigs. His debut is a slick, wisely restrained sci-fi thriller that tackles some big issues. In the age of rapidly advancing AI and data mining, this is one timely feature.

7 Out of 10