Darkfield "Flight" - review
https://www.darkfield.com.au/wellington
Last day tomorrow: 27 July 2025
I told myself I didn't need another reason to fear flying after watching the movies The Core, Alive, and even the BLOODY news! But I went anyway, and I'm glad I did.
Because of course this binaural, pitch-dark show is not really about a plane crash. It's an examination on the nature of consciousness, specifically the idea that our consciousness never dies: at the moment of death, we just hop into an alternate branch of reality where we survived. How could it possibly be otherwise? The dead “you” doesn't know it's dead; it may as well have never even existed.
They manage to pack this weighty concept into a crisp 22 minutes. Like Séance, I think that's a little too short. But in complete darkness, it feels longer. And the binaural recording of the material is excellent, especially when combined with sparse lighting and visual effects, as well as use of somatic sub and mechanical movement of the seats.
There's no question that much of the illusion depends on the setup. It's in a shipping container - which is similarly shaped to a plane fuselage - and the seats are proper aeroplane seats with seatbelts and safety cards. The reverberation therefore is thoroughly convincing, even though the headphones are not head-tracked.
10-20 mins more running time would have been welcome. There would have been time to flesh out the narrative element and develop the sound design more. No doubt someone has worked out an ‘optimal time for financial return’, which I guess is working for them. Remember, it doesn't have the historic advantage of cinema’s century and a quarter to test and hone its narrative efficacy. It has to balance modern day attention spans with the introduction of a new medium and also financial viability. Of course, I myself would err on the side of more time for my money, but I'm not representative of a general audience.
There's one day left in Wellington to experience it, I fully recommend you do so. Because when they return, they'll take the lessons from this to present an even better one. One day they'll reach the sublime.
To do that, they need to stay in business, and I think that is worth supporting.