Haphead (2015) Reviews

• Advanced Gaming... Base Humanity

  icewing-782-583802015-02-08

  I backed this project on Kickstarter and have to say, I think it was money well spent. The story is, without spoilers, about a young woman trying to find herself, in the process who turns to a game world enabled by Haptic technology (the users of which are known as Hapheads (per the title) to escape the dull monotonous life that she finds herself trapped in. (if only it was that easy....) But, then, her life becomes far too much like one of the games she had tried to escape into... But, in the real world, you can't simply log off. I liked this production. It's been noted that this is 'season 1' of the web series, and if that's the case, I'm definitely looking forward to Season 2. As an amateur writer myself, I like seeing these kind of independent projects move forward. Downsides: As this was an extremely shoe-string budget, the online game perspective could definitely have been done better. Although the texturing seemed good on the 'digital avatars', I found the overall movement of the characters in the game engine the production team used for their 'online game world FX' to be fairly rudimentary. Yet, they did a pretty darn good job with the little flying drone (the design seemed fairly basic, but honestly, I could see it being the kind of thing that i-robot might try to use to make personal service drones to be 'non-threatening'). Makeup team did a good job on post-fight makeup and everything else seemed very believable.

• Quite entertaining, actually

  siderite2015-04-27

  Amazing how blasé we have become. If a film doesn't have the look and feel of a hundred million dollar movie we rate it low. In fact, this series should be rated as the low budget, high ambition film it is. Let's start with the bad: some actors are not really all there and the production values are low. However, the story shows a dystopian future where people work in a more capitalist environment (wage slaves) but enjoy the benefits of technology like personal drones, instant food microwave heaters, screenless phones that transmit images directly into your eyes and - the main focus of the show - cables that can make you feel virtual reality and connect into your muscle memory, allowing you to learn new skills. Not "I know Kung-fu" style, but through accelerating learning in virtual environments. Add to this pervasive drone surveillance by insurance companies, young people who get amazing physical skills from the "hap" interface, bounty hunters, biohacking and you get an interesting universe, described just through story, acting and a 3D rabbit game. I didn't expect much, so probably that is why I was impressed, but at the same time I can appreciate the effect of a film relative to the budget and I liked Haphead and I will be waiting for the second season.

• A young woman steals a haptic cable, eventually entangling her story the hapheads and a bio-hacker...

  desktopvs62015-08-14

  Hapheads is about a young woman, working in a haptic cable factory situated in a special economic zone. Even tough the cables aren't released yet she manages to steal one, eventually entangling her story the hapheads and a bio-hacker... Rating and reviewing this for what it is, a low-budget web series, this is amazing. It is incredibly well shot given the budget, the environments are well-chosen and the story is interesting and has an originality you don't find often The only downside is that even tough the story itself is great, the storytelling isn't. Sometimes things just don't come over very realistically. In the end it is not perfect, but surely worth watching!

• Wonderful piece that continues to satisfy

  hannibalsmith-774-9717672016-02-09

  The eight episode web series centers in 18 year old Maxine (White) living in Toronto in the year 2025. She's finished school and just taken a barely minimum wage job with Asterisk Industries as a Quality Control Inspector at their Hamilton factory. Maxine's a Gamer, and Asterisk has just developed a new haptic interface cable that will revolutionize the Gaming Industry. The cables aren't available to the public yet, but Hamilton is in a "Special Economic Zone" where many of the rules don't apply. As Maxine begins to immerse herself in HapHead culture, only the skills she learns through gaming can help her navigate the perils and hardships unfolding around her. Man, I swear I should've written the back of the Blu-Ray box. Anyhow, far as I'm concerned the entirety of HapHead starts and ends with star Elysia White. When you have less than ten minutes per episode to tell your story, you better have one hell of a lead, and Elysia delivers. Sarcastic, caring, determined, conniving when needed, Elysia's Maxine is Canadian Indie Film's answer to Veronica Mars. Just with more punching. First and foremost, Maxine's fight scenes. OK sure they might be kind of short, but there's no stunt double. Elysia White did all of it herself, and you have to respect that. I also couldn't help but notice a lot of the acting choices that make her performance stand out. At one point around episode 4 (maybe 5), a spoilers thing happens that has a tremendous effect on Maxine's world. Something where most human actresses would've gone straight to the waterworks. Elysia, instead, portrays Maxine as numb and trying to carry on. You know, what most people would actually do! The big emotional scene, when Maxine finally does break down, comes at a time that makes sense. When she realizes her entire world has come crashing down, nothing's as she thought it was and not crying is incredibly not believable. And you know what? Elysia sells the hell out of it! Now HapHead is certainly not perfect. When you watch the feature length edit, the fact that it's eight episodes of a series strung together can show in spots. The story logic falters in places; some you can let go (an insurance company with a SWAT team? Well, 2025 Hamilton, you never know) and some you can't (I don't think $2 million gets you fancy hotels for the rest of your life), and many of the fight scenes are shorter than I'd like. It's also a slow build, and normally that's not even my thing. I couldn't truly get into it until about episode four. The people behind the show are really really friendly and active on social media, so even if a particular episode wasn't super interesting, chatting with them while watching really really was. Now if the faults I just listed are a problem, I'd say to watch the "bonus features" on HapHead's YouTube channel. You see people creating something from virtually nothing, all the heart and effort that went into it, and what faults HapHead has suddenly become really forgivable. HapHead has its problems, I just don't care about any of them. While plans are in place for season 2, they haven't got the funding yet. Frankly, that's a crime. I mean, I see web series like Star Trek:Renegades rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars and put out a product that is truly awful and has no heart, while a series like HapHead that's nothing but heart can barely scrape together anything. When did people put brand loyalty ahead of quality?! Lastly, and I figure most importantly, HapHead is just fun. Some properties, you enjoy them and you move on. They're great but you rarely have the urge to go back. But there's other properties, movies, TV, web series, whatever, that whether it's out of nostalgia, genuine love, or something else, you keep going back. You go back to it again and again and no matter how many times you re-watch it, it's still just as satisfying as it was the first time. I've re-watched HapHead maybe eighteen times. What can I say? Like Maxine says, "I'm a Rabbit all the way." So here's the deal. I quite honestly cannot recommend HapHead enough. It's a story that's set in the short term future that will actually still work when the short term future comes. Go on YouTube, find it, watch it, love it, tell your friends about it. And when you're done, you can go to www.haphead.com, get some behind the scenes info, maybe even send a few bucks their way to help make season two a reality. This is the kind of quality science fiction people should be supporting. I want this to go the way that show Sanctuary went. Start on the web, then get picked up for a network run.