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Good concept, poorly executed.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This was a very difficult film for me to initially get in to. Possibly due to the low-budget independent nature of it combined with the rather clumsy attempts at casual conversation and character building that takes up the entire first 10 minutes or so of the film. I don't know enough about these characters yet to care about the kind of conversations they have at the beginning, and the rather weak way its handled does not ingratiate me to them any quicker. The whole introductory portion could've been significantly edited down or else sharpened a bit. For me, the low-budget indie style and the initial tone of the film reminded me a bit of "Primer", but the comparisons end there. Primer was very direct, sharply focused, and didn't care if you couldn't keep up with its extreme technical dialogue while not leaving you behind as it unfolds. This film doesn't know enough about the technical matters of its subject to leave you behind with. Its initial introduction to the characters trying to create a means of "telepathy" seems to go over your head, until you realize there's almost nothing actually to it, technically. David types rapidly on the keyboard, Ryan fuses wires to a computer chip, then attaches it to his head, Jordan is there to be the token girl character, Melanie to be the cliché nagging wife, Lana to be the MacGuffin child whose sole purpose is being the object that motivates David. Typing is done, overly dramatic code is displayed, and people are overly concerned with the well-being of the subject guy even when nothing happens.Once going past the introductory stage, we're abruptly introduced to some cliché sketchy generic CIA FBI Men in Black types with what looks to be the exact same type of device trying to put thoughts and ideas into people's minds and getting them to do pointlessly hideous things like get a guy to kill his dog for no reason because they're the bad guys and that's what bad guys do (thankfully, he doesn't kill the dog, but kills himself instead, as any reasonable person would). These two plot elements very quickly come together so you're not left wondering too long what the hell you just saw and get worked up over the painfully cliché evil tone it sets, complete with blinding bright lights and one-way mirror with sinister roughneck government guy angrily complaining about progress being slow. The two main characters are brought before sinister roughneck government guy via Jordan who turns out to be working for the CIA and spying on them. Then they all start working together on some telepathy-based project with no clear or coherent content. There's literally no mention of what they are actually researching or trying to do. They all work in a lab where they've apparently already mastered telepathy perfectly; they can read each others thoughts and be needlessly paranoid around each other while a row of shaved-headed bald white men in black turtlenecks sit in a sinister little room perpetually lit red, spying on the workers with the workers fully aware of them and able to look at each other. It's such an absurd, Kafkaesque setup that I, as a viewer, got needlessly angry at it. It made so little sense to have identically-dressed, identically-hairstyled people sitting in a room opposite a lab, in full view of the lab workers, just constantly monitoring them and staring them down whenever one of them makes eye contact. Suddenly, David spies on the head lab doctor's notes, and finds... literally I don't even know what. We get quick shots at some sinister looking lab notes, the name "DARKBIRD II", a picture of a baby, and some other science-y buzz words and now David is set to bring down the entire operation they're working on. The one opportunity he has at explaining this is via a rapid, paranoid meeting with Ryan in a public place because their apartments are bugged because it would be a major plot twist if they weren't. His explanation is... I literally don't even know what. He rambles some incoherent thing about free will, the gubmint spying on people via telepathy, and gives some dumb examples of CIA being able to manipulate elections or turn random civilians into assassins using their magic macguffin telepathy. Somehow Ryan thinks this is all a good idea, implying it would mean no wars, no crimes, no violence, etcetera, and given how thinly explained the whole project was, you literally could believe either side of this and believe that the other side is completely wrong. You may as well have been told "This project is bad because people will be hurt" versus "This project is good because people won't be hurt" and it wouldn't have done anything more or less. David gets into an incident with his estranged wife, then runs away to become a Buddhist monk, because he told Ryan earlier that he could try to deceive the CIA telepathy turtlenecks by thinking about one thing while doing another and that somehow only Buddhist monks are capable of doing this well enough for him to do it without detection. The montage consists solely of him getting his head shaved, some bland, generic meditation and lecturing from some Buddhist monk guy, then he leaves to go execute his plan. His final plan is basically... kill everyone. He says the project is so dangerous, all of them basically need to die, so he turns on a two-way feed between everyone's telepathy in the lab, causing a feedback loop thing which somehow kills everyone's brains, making them all vegetables. Ryan manages to pull off his telepathy chip and confronts David afterwards yelling at him because he killed Jordan, then non-telepathy CIA agents come in and kill David after he kills Ryan with the feedback loop. What did we learn from the movie? Virtually nothing. The whole telepathy idea the film runs with basically consists of hearing thoughts while the camera flickers back and forth between two still images of the people thinking, like a primitive imitation of 3D. For all the ideas the film offers in terms of telepathy, it's shocking how much literally nothing happens throughout so much of the film, with nothing behind the telepathy, nothing behind the CIA plot, nothing coherent or definite happening, everything relying upon vagaries and hand-waving to try to tell a boring, cliché story that ends up depending so much on the stuff that is hand-waved away

I think 4 out of 10 stars for this movie is generous but I'll admit it has a really fascinating concept. That was why I chose to watch it, was the premise. It just didn't deliver.At no point are the three lead actors convincing in their roles. They are poorly written and don't even make sense. I never believed that any of these grad students could be remotely capable of the advanced science they were supposed to be doing. And the characters are not likable. I was never rooting for them to succeed in any manner.Not to mention that this "sci-fi" movie was predictable and filled with every cliché and trope in the book. It's not even worth this many words.

This is an excellent film which tackles some very interesting moral questions in an understandable and entertaining way. It's rare to see such a strong narrative which holds your interest for the entire film. With surprisingly good production values and some great casting choices, this really is a 'Diamond in the Rough'. There are plenty of twists and turns in the plot, which deals with basic human freedoms and ethics - even though it can seem a little slow at the start. If you stick with this movie and give it a chance, you'll find yourself drawn into a world of secrets, espionage and brain-computer interfacing. If you enjoy films that pose interesting moral dilemmas and aren't just full of action, stunts and CGI effects, this title is one of the best I've seen in quite a while and I'd recommend it highly.

"Listening" is a character study that is driven by a sci-fi plot line and is dragged down by unpleasant characters and some confusion. The story involves David and Ryan, two graduate students who are working on creating a device that allows mental telepathy. Instead of explaining this to their professor and working on this potentially historical invention as their thesis with the full backing of the university, they decide - for reasons never explained - to steal a bunch of equipment and hole up in the garage of David's house that he rents with his wife and daughter. One day, Ryan brings over Jordan, a smoking hot girl he picked up who just also happens to be a brilliant scientific grad student as well. With her assistance, they make a huge breakthrough. However, the amount of time they spend working on the device causes problems with their personal lives and the invention itself has caught the eye of the CIA...Make no mistake -- "Listening" is not a horror film, it's not really a sci-fi film, it's not really a "warning" film about "Would you want telepathy?" It is about David and Ryan, and everything else is just the conflict these two have to face. But this one fails because of that. The two characters are eminently unlikable, and they make incomprehensible choices and decisions at every single step. Huge questions are put forth and never answered. For example, Jordan has an ability that seems to violate every rule, and when she is asked about this incredibly valuable skill, she dismisses the question and it's never brought up again. It's never explained why the CIA would be so interested, since the covert government program seems to be something very different from what David and Ryan are doing. The acting is solid, the directing and photography is clean and professional, but I just can't say I enjoyed it enough to recommend. Perhaps that's because I was drawn in by the marketing campaign promising a sci-fi extravaganza.