‘For some peo­ple, sim­u­la­tion the­o­ry is not a joke’ – Rod­ney Asch­er on A Glitch in the Matrix

Rod­ney Asch­er makes haunt­ed house movies inside the human mind. Play­ful and unset­tling, his hor­ror doc­u­men­taries fil­ter sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence through pop-cul­ture psy­chol­o­gy, study­ing the art we con­sume and how it con­sumes us.

In Room 237, Asch­er spoke to obses­sive fans of Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing, chart­ing the gulfs that can open up between artis­tic intent and indi­vid­ual inter­pre­ta­tion. The Night­mare exam­ined sleep paral­y­sis, restag­ing eight par­tic­i­pants’ dark­est dreams and doc­u­ment­ing their search for answers through cin­e­ma, faith, and sociology.

The LA-based filmmaker’s lat­est, A Glitch in the Matrix, which pre­miered at this year’s vir­tu­al Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val and hits dig­i­tal plat­forms on 5 Feb­ru­ary, plunges us into an exis­ten­tial rab­bit hole of ​‘sim­u­la­tion the­o­ry’. It ques­tions whether we’re liv­ing inside some­one else’s com­put­er – by intro­duc­ing a group of experts and so-called ​“eye­wit­ness­es” con­vinced we are.

“When­ev­er some­thing crazy hap­pens in the world – and cra­zier things appear to be hap­pen­ing at an ever-increas­ing rate – some­one on Twit­ter is mak­ing the joke that the sim­u­la­tion is bug­gy,” says Asch­er. ​“It’s becom­ing a short­hand to explain a com­mon feel­ing. But if a hun­dred peo­ple are mak­ing jokes about it, a thou­sand peo­ple are think­ing about it and not say­ing it out loud. For some of them, it’s not a joke.”

The film traces sim­u­la­tion theory’s exis­ten­tial con­cerns back to Plato’s cave and Descartes’ evil demon hypoth­e­sis, though it cred­its the Wachowskis’ Matrix tril­o­gy, lit­er­ary giant Philip K Dick, and Oxford phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor Nick Bostrom (who wrote the 2001 arti­cle ​‘Are You Liv­ing in a Com­put­er Sim­u­la­tion?’), as well as oth­er pub­lic fig­ures, with pop­u­lar­is­ing such notions in mod­ern times.

“When Elon Musk talked about sim­u­la­tion the­o­ry dur­ing a press con­fer­ence,” adds Asch­er, ​“that idea seemed to catch on in a way that was far beyond the train of ​‘peo­ple who spend too much time watch­ing sci­ence fic­tion movies or on the inter­net.’ One of the most suc­cess­ful peo­ple on the globe believed in it, or at least took it seriously.”

But Ascher’s film – com­pris­ing dig­i­tal reen­act­ments, footage from ​’90s sci-fi movies and video games, and Skype inter­views – spends less time with thought lead­ers than it does every­day peo­ple who sus­pect real­i­ty is less than real. Among the accounts: a pastor’s son, altered by a cri­sis of faith; a Har­vard-edu­cat­ed engi­neer, con­vinced the num­bers back up sim­u­la­tion the­o­ry after a string of unex­plain­able events; and a New York­er, track­ing syn­chronic­i­ties in his life, who utilis­es a sen­so­ry-depri­va­tion tank.

To offer such sub­jects anonymi­ty, 3D avatars are imposed over faces and upper bod­ies. Despite this arti­fice, Asch­er approach­es inter­vie­wees com­pas­sion­ate­ly. ​“These projects are about let­ting an audi­ence look at the world through anoth­er person’s eyes,” he says. ​“I remem­ber sit­ting on my parent’s car­pet in a sun­beam, look­ing at dust motes, strug­gling to under­stand some ele­ment of the world. I find those moments infi­nite­ly relatable.”

The film’s scari­est sto­ry fol­lows Joshua Cooke, who speaks from prison about the night his obses­sion with The Matrix crossed a hor­ri­fy­ing line. His tes­ti­mo­ny is accom­pa­nied by a haunt­ing walk­through of his house and base­ment that Asch­er height­ens using ani­mat­ed pho­togram­me­try. ​“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t solic­it­ing sto­ries that I hoped would have a cer­tain effect,” says Asch­er, who first approached Cooke after learn­ing his lawyers had con­sid­ered attempt­ing ​‘the Matrix defence’ at tri­al, argu­ing he hadn’t known what was real at the time of his crimes. ​“I tried to be as true to his sto­ry, and to my reac­tion to hear­ing it, as possible.”

Might the Matrix defence have worked? Ascher’s films chal­lenge audi­ences not to dis­count the ways art shapes our psy­cholo­gies. ​“Pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions that mem­o­rised the Bible would be able to com­pare their prob­lems to Job’s,” he notes. ​“Now, [pop cul­ture] is the lan­guage we all speak fluently.”

Ascher’s direc­to­r­i­al choic­es dic­tate all his audi­ence sees. Mak­ing movies that inter­ro­gate per­cep­tion, the irony of that respon­si­bil­i­ty isn’t lost on him. He accounts for it by demol­ish­ing the wall between direc­tor and sub­ject, appear­ing on cam­era and employ­ing con­spic­u­ous edits to remind view­ers they’re watch­ing a movie. ​“Shoot­ing a lit­tle off the edge of the sets, reveal­ing the arti­fice of the recre­ations, is impor­tant to me,” explains Asch­er. ​“I want to show my hand, to show that there’s a man behind the curtain.”

By deal­ing in psy­cho­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­na, Asch­er steers away from objec­tive truths. And in the case of A Glitch in the Matrix, that’s like­ly wise. Giv­en that any evi­dence gath­ered in pur­suit of sim­u­la­tion the­o­ry could itself be sim­u­lat­ed, does he con­sid­er it pos­si­ble to prove either way? ​“It’s an unan­swer­able ques­tion. But all these projects are much more about the ques­tions than they are about the answers. Room 237, for me, is ask­ing the ques­tion, ​‘Who decides what a piece of art means? The artist, the audi­ences, crit­ics, aca­d­e­mics?’ And sleep paral­y­sis in The Night­mare is ask­ing the ques­tion of, ​‘These things peo­ple see, these twi­light expe­ri­ences: do they come from inside, or do they come from outside?’”

A Glitch in the Matrix, mean­while, cap­tures peo­ple earnest­ly strug­gling with real­i­ty and their roles with­in it, sim­u­lat­ed or not. ​“The ques­tion of ​‘Are we all liv­ing in the [same] world, or are we all liv­ing in indi­vid­ual worlds?’ might be one this film is pok­ing up against,” says Asch­er. ​“Is there a way for us to find a con­sen­sus reality?”