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Gray Matter (now on Max) is the final product emerging from the new, sort-of-rebooted season of Project Greenlight (debuting concurrently on Max with the movie), the reality series that follows fledgling directors as they take the helm of their first feature film. The series’ return after eight years of dormancy put filmmaker Meko Winbush to work on a sci-fi horror-thriller, with mentors Issa Rae, Kumail Nanjiani and Gina Prince-Bythewood guiding her (and replacing OG PG mentors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck). The show revealed that it wasn’t easy for Winbush, even with a talented core cast of Mia Isaac (Don’t Make Me Go), Jessica Frances Dukes (Ozark) and veteran character actor Garret Dillahunt (Deadwood, Raising Hope) – and the result is a mixed bag of strong performances and underwhelming writing.
GRAY MATTER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: We meet Ayla (Dukes) as she plants bombs on a building. The cops arrive and they corner her, but she’s the one issuing warnings for them to back off. Brazen, yes, but then she starts reading one cop’s mind, and using telekinesis to toss objects at them. The screen goes black and we hear gunshots and a voice says “What the hell happened?” Then, a title card defines the word “psionic” as a person capable of telepathy, telekinesis, astral projection (!) and teleportation (!!). “Their existence remains a secret,” it reads, and that’s pretty much the extent of the worldbuilding going on here.
FIFTEEN YEARS LATER, Ayla all but keeps her 16-year-old daughter Aurora (Isaac) locked in the house. The girl has the same psionic powers as her mother, who’s teaching her how to control and use them responsibly – they play little dinner table games where they play keep-away with forks and saltshakers. Ayla goes on about how a mysterious “they” might come after our mother-daughter protags, but never explains who “they” are. “They” are of course dangerous, and are apparently capable of invading a person’s memories and other highly intrusive things. But between the frustratingly vague not-telling-your-daughter-jack-shit-about-why-they-keep-moving-from-place-to-place and the tedious homeschooling and strict isolation, you’ve got yourself a recipe for an Angsty Teen.
With openness and honesty being an issue – we could all shout some parenting tips at the screen if Ayla wants to listen, but she seems like the stubborn type – we’re not at all surprised to learn Aurora lives something of a secret life. She sneaks out to hang with her one secret friend, Isaiah (Andrew Liner), when Ayla “goes out for supplies,” which is psionic-fugitive code for “grocery shopping.” The withholding of information chicken comes home to roost when Aurora meets up with Isaiah and some of his friends, and tragedy strikes in the form of a psychic outburst that maybe could’ve been prevented if her mother would’ve told her such things could happen? I dunno, just a thought. Releasing that level of psychic energy draws the attention of Derek, who’s a classic Garret Dillahunt type who has the demeanor of a nice, calm guy, except you don’t trust that look in his eye. Should we trust his pleasant disposition or the gut feeling that he’s a creep? I won’t answer that, although you probably already know.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Gray Matter has a generic X-Men-on-one-twentieth-of-the-budget feel to it, and even boasts a high-powered psychic character with a bald head.
Performance Worth Watching: Isaac and Dukes are a rock-solid foundation for this story, which keys in on a fraught mother-daughter dynamic. You’ll just wish the screenplay and Winbush pushed them outside the bounds of basic melodrama.
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Memorable Dialogue: Derek delivers a doozy – and maybe almost but probably not throws us for a loop – when he tries to turn Aurora’s allegiance with her mother: “You shouldn’t be protecting her.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: In the debut episode of the new Project Greenlight season, Rae and her cohorts tell Winbush that the Gray Matter script needs a rewrite, and it’s her job to do it. The rest of the season documents how she plows ahead with the screenplay as-is, despite the questions and the nudging and doubt being cast her way. The resulting film reflects this problem exquisitely: It’s a skeleton of a story that desperately needs more meat on its bones. One of Rae’s somewhat explicit goals was to put a woman of color behind the camera, but if said woman doesn’t channel her perspective into the writing, no amount of directorial vision, savvy editing or confident cinematography can make up for that. And the result is a generically watchable supernatural thriller lacking in detail and a distinct point-of-view.
The screenplay came to the project via Catchlight Productions, an offshoot of Blumhouse, the one-time bootstrap studio that built upon the astronomical success of Paranormal Activity and has since produced gems ranging from Get Out to The Invisible Man remake, but also has churned out dozens of boilerplate genre stuff seemingly designed to fill streaming-content mandates. Unfortunately, that’s precisely where Gray Matter lands, despite Wimbush’s rock-solid visual acumen and ability to regulate a consistent tone. A key element of the story is the characters’ ability to manipulate reality, shifting between the conscious world and memories, but Wimbush never really exploits the provocative implications of that concept. I often found myself fishing for subtext or a metaphor, but there was nothing on the hook. Nothing about the film is particularly memorable beyond the behind-the-camera real-life story that spawned it.
Our Call: Gray Matter is just another title in your endless scroll through the streaming menu. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
