True Skin, a 2012 short film that looks something like tech on steroids amidst a futuristic depiction of Bangkok’s red light district, has now been optioned by Amazon Studios to be made into a series. Written and directed by Stephan Zlotescu, the short was previously picked up by Warner Brothers less than a week after it showed on the web. Warner Bothers lost the rights and Amazon quickly stepped in.

What’s so special about this film that doesn’t even make the five minute mark?

Firstly, it’s more of a trailer for something bigger (that worked) than it is a coherent short film. That said, the mesmerizing neon of Bangkok where it was filmed; the sweltering, salacious walkways where men, women and transgender folks purvey their God-given flesh; the undergrowth of poverty and over-ripe lawlessness of the given area, are all eye-catchingly stylized to fit a not too distant future.

A future where humans, including the protagonist who ends up in Bangkok for a black market version of a technological augmentation – not far from the truth considering the wealth of cheap cosmetic augmentations available in Bangkok – no longer want to be merely organic.

“It’s all about parts, and everyone wants them,” says the main character. Who wants to get sick, get old, and die, he asks. Only the underground chip that changes his life forever is highly classified, and soon he’s on the run from the Feds et al. So what does one do in such a predicament, in the future where body parts are interchangeable? He changes his eyes, and with some difficulty, his skin.

“You can get anything you want here,” he says, which again is not too far from the truth. Although every vice purveyed comes with a futuristic slant: “Yum-yum chemical massage, to the latest and greatest of virtual drug programs, robot helpers, holographic suit.” Touts in the street offer holographic models of their wares while our man seeks carnal fulfillment with a robot, or Plexi. His dalliance with the Plexi, though, is cut short with a coitus interruptus when the government agencies on his tail seem to have caught up with him on the city’s sometimes mean, sometimes manic streets.

Avoiding the cliche

The visual effects in the short film, by a cinematographer who goes by the name of H1, are quite brilliant for an internet-based, five-minute film released on Vimeo. VFX company Opticflavor will provide the effects for the Amazon series, a company behind some of the effects in the music videos of Lady Gaga and Kanya West. Zlotescu will direct, and Scott Glassgold’s Ground Control company will produce the series.

If True Skin, the short, suffers, it suffers in its writing. The monologue of the protagonist is clichéd, while the quick-thickening plot hardly reaches a point past boiler plate banality. It’s another homage to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner of course, but one feels that True Skin might escape being a bad, overly-influenced neo-noir derivative if it’s also enmeshed in an entirely foreign culture – to most – avoiding tech as well as cultural stereotypes. It’s about time the world had a different type of cyborg; it’s about time TV took technology to the heart of the matter instead of crunching out delusional fantasies far, far away from any conceivable future. After all, people are already getting chipped and becoming part cyborg.

Too often do studios rely on special effects and seem myopic to the fact that viewers cannot be spellbound with a dull, lifeless plot plodding away, unaware that a large audience can only be achieved with grounded pathos and intelligent design – even when the genre is science fiction. Remember the disastrous Minority Report recently put out by Fox, a series that reshaped the Philip K. Dick story as a puerile shoot ‘em up devoid of any of its creator’s intentions.

Amazon is yet to say when the pilot will be released.

Photo credit: TrueSkinFilm