Sci-Fi Month REDUX: #5

The Top 10 Best Sci-Fi Movies You've (probably) Never Heard Of

#5: Sleep Dealer (2008)

What It Is

Sleep Dealer is the feature-length debut of filmmaker Alex Rivera, a New Yorker of latin American descent. It depicts a near-future world where the USA has fulfilled the dream of right-wing nutters everywhere by erecting a colossal wall that spans the entire length of the Mexican-American border. Simultaneously, they have also constructed several huge dams that block the southward flow of all bodies of water, thereby creating a desperate new strain of violent protest, "aqua-terrorism". And, to top of the situation, the US has resolved their cheap immigrant labour trouble through the use of cybernetic work factories nicknamed "Sleep Dealers", where Mexican citizens log into a global network that allows them to control robotic proxies. In the words of one of the factory foremen, "We give the United States what they've always wanted: all the work...without the workers."

Prepare to feel guilty.

In the tiny village of Santa Ana Del Rio (now a misnomer, as the Rio (river) has been dammed off), we meet Memo Cruz, a young man who romanticizes the Sleep Dealers as the perfect life, getting a taste of an America he will never see with his own eyes. Memo frequently hacks into phone calls to hear the firsthand stories of fellow Mexicans elatedly telling their relatives of how they control robot nannies in Washington, or taxi drivers in New York. Memo's father, on the other hand, hasn't given up on the family farm, despite the skyrocketing costs of water that the American companies control.

When Memo accidentally eavesdrops on a water company utilizing a robotic drone to kill aqua-terrorists, he inadvertently forces himself into a situation where he MUST go to Tijuana to work in the cybernetic factories Meanwhile, the drone's pilot, American-born Rudy Ramirez, pursues Memo through the stories he hears from Memo's Tijuanan friend Luz. Luz, a writer who sells her memories through the global network, provides Memo with his entryway to the world of the Sleep Dealers.

Why You've Never Heard of It

I'm gonna throw some words at you.

Independent.

Low-budget.

Foreign language.

Science fiction.

That about sums it up.

But, in spite of this, it was fairly well-received by critics, and it seems likely that Rivera will be getting plenty of opportunities in the future, so keep an eye out for this young director in the future.

Why It's Worthy of Inclusion

This is the movie I saw most recently on my list of unknowns, and it's also the most recent to come out. Frankly, I think it's criminal that more people haven't heard of it and that it hasn't been distributed widely.

The negative reviews I've read of Sleep Dealer unfairly pick at the special effects and the budget, which is about the silliest thing I can think of when a movie is assessed (it's why Avatar was nominated for Best Picture in spite of having a plot somewhere on the level of Twilight and Horton Hears a Who). I want to get this out of the way, because I want to emphasize that the ideas in Sleep Dealer ring so true not because of effects of money, but because we're already seeing them come up today.

Robotic drones, resource wars, even memory recording and selling: these are all concepts and practices already being felt in our society. That's what makes Sleep Dealer alarming and important. It may seem extreme in its ideas - for instance, the logistics of constructing the wall across the border make it all but impossible, in my view - but that is so often how science fiction communicates ideas and warns us about the perils of a negative future.

Rivera makes sure to show us that the so-called "solution" of immigrant labour will only be even more one-sided than it already is. Robotic surrogates may suddenly seem like the safest thing in the world, but we see that the controllers can suffer electric shorts that leave them blind or catatonic. What's more, even though automation is supposed to make our lives easier, paradoxically it only allows the workers to drive themselves into longer and longer hours, relying on chemical pick-me-ups directly injected into their nodes.

To fully flesh out this world and make it living and breathable, Rivera adds some well-placed environmental touches. When we first meet Luz, she returns to her apartment to a message from her Student Loans department. It politely tells her that she is in serious default, and if she fails to make payments they will enter her home and repossess her belongings. Her interface for selling memories has a realistic monetary need and interface to it. We see the kind of stories that people read versus the stories that Luz wants to tell. Another great touch is when we see the security measures in place around the dam site. A camera with an mounted machine gun observes Memo and his father, and in slowly translated English informs them that the price for 35 litres of water will be 85 dollars. This is not the only case of hyper-inflated daylight robbery; when Memo digitally transfers his earnings of $270 to his family, the "surcharges" leave his brother and mother with $180.

If it all seems a bit nightmarish, that's the point. Cautionary tales are only cautionary if they jolt their audience, alarm them. And Sleep Dealer is alarming, and a call to action.

Early on, we see Memo's father hurl a rock in impotent frustration against the dam that choked his farm of life. He seems tiny and insignificant. We soon realize, however, that the world is nothing if not the sum total of the actions of many, many individuals, and though they may lack permanence in the immediate past or the immediate future, what matters is that they can and will shape what happens now.

Everyone should see this movie, sci-fi fans and film fans alike. It is a true hidden gem, and worthy of recognition.