Rodney Ascher is one of the more fascinating documentary directors, turning his focus on objects of obsession both within-and-out of the genre community. Room 237 focused on Stanley Kubrick fans who obsessed over small details within the film they felt supported conspiracy theroeis about how Kubrick faked the moon landing among other wild conjectures. The Nightmare, meanwhile, focuses on personal accounts of their ordeals with sleep paralysis. Both eschew the talking heads scientist or expert testimonials in favor of focusing on those who are deeply enmeshed in their own bits of obsession.

A Glitch in the Matrix follows suit by mostly presenting personal testimonials about why the individual person believes that what I’m writing right now isn’t, in fact, real. In a weirdly on-brand way of hiding the interviewees’ identities by creating an Augmented Reality (AR) avatar that hides their face and body. I’m unsure whether each interviewee chose their particular avatar or whether it was a directorial choice but whoever made them doesn’t do the subjects any service to their claims.

Take Brother Læo Mystwood, who’s presented as a golden wolf or an Anubis/Sphinx character as he talks about the tests he would do perform, like thinking about orange fish and then, ten minutes later, discovering a restaurant with an orange fish in the sign he’d never seen before. Or how he’d obsessively track his days and noticed trends, like on the twelfth day of his twelve day week (yes, he counts a week as twelve days) certain things would pop up with regularity.

Another interviewee was a man named Paul Gude presented as a talking lion-like creature with a fiery mane talks about his lonely childhood and drives to St. Louis where he would “realize” that his life is a creation. That someone is playing a film while they’re changing all of the sets to St. Louis along his lengthy drive. Another person dressed as a mix between an alien in a space suit and the unmasked Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi talks about his time playing Guitar Hero for two days straight; a life spent playing video games every single day, all day, and nothing else “for years.”

Together they seem to press the idea that the nearly eight billion people in the world aren’t all conscious people. That some of them are, in game terms, non-player characters (NPCs), a dangerous meme that might have gained traction on 4-chan that spilled, surprise-surprise, into an alt-right trolling campaign. The dangerous implication is very self-centric, as some of the interviewees suggest that they are a real consciousness surrounding by fake consciousness; AI bots that react to the individual and aren’t, in fact, “real.” Or, more worryingly, that they are a video game character being controlled by someone outside of the simulation. It brings up frightening implications to suggest that the world outside us is merely a simulation and that we...meaning me, myself and I...are the only “real” consciousnesses.

In other words, this review is meaningless since either:

I’m writing this to an audience of none. That you, reading this, don’t actually exist.
Someone outside of “the game” called life is writing this as either a way to wake up the sheeple who don’t believe they’re living in a simulation or they’re writing it to keep you subdued to the “Truth.”

Which brings us to The Matrix. Asher’s documentary interjects bits of writing from science fiction authors such as Philip K. Dick or philosophers such as Plato and his Allegory of the Cave. His allegory, in particular, is framed as an example of how the thought of the fake world has existed for thousands of years even though there are multiple interpretations of the allegory, particularly as a metaphor for the way education brings light to ignorance.

The specifics and interpreations of Plato’s allegory aren’t important because the documentary simply brings up these concepts without any insight to interrogate them. Much like the entertaining Room 237 that simply allowed Kubrick conspiracy theorists a platform to talk about their readings of The Shining, A Glitch in the Matrix simply allows its subjects the space to talk. It frames most of the discussion around Philip K. Dick’s infamous “Metz Speech” entitled “If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others.” And it’s an intriguing speech unlike any I’m sure the audience ever expected. But like with the idea of simulation theory, A Glitch in the Matrix doesn’t interogate this speech or Dick’s life and mental state in general.

A Glitch in the Matrix becomes a frustrating experience for skeptics because it doesn’t seem interested in questioning anything. Only to present so-called “first hand” experiences.

The only hint about the consequences of believing we’re in a simulation comes in the form of Joshua Cooke, a teenager who believed he lived in The Matrix to disastrously disturbing results. The result is a mishmash of conspiracy theorists whose AR appearance further enhances their incredulity of their experiences and a reliance on the popularity of The Matrix and the writings of Philip K. Dick. It was never a boring watch but it was a frequently irritating one.