‘Kill Code’ (a.k.a. ‘Hard Matter’) (2026)

Set in the not-too-distant future, 'Kill Code' explores the state of the world as megacorporation Alpire amasses control in a divided America.

Opening on expositional text, we learn that after suffering a second civil war, America has been divided into four quadrants. With minimal resources and an increasing prison population, Alpire head Eion (Harvey Keitel) has developed advanced nanotechnology that he intends to use to assert power over the country, one quadrant at a time.

Infiltrating Alpire as part of its policing force, Elera (Franzi Schissler), daughter of resistance fighters, works the beat, investigating suspicious violent crime outbreaks. As it turns out, in a conspiracy to control the masses, Eion's nanotechnology is used to force people to kill targets, delivered via nanite injection from a watch the person is forced to wear.

Perplexing and outright incoherent at times, the plot of the film makes little to no sense. The basic premise of the dystopian future and evil megacorporation trying to take control of everyone becomes overcomplicated as a slew of characters are introduced. Suffering minimal development, the characters largely function as poor shadows of action thriller character tropes. The entire cast of characters somehow individually lack any depth, providing for less than one-dimensional personas.

Attribute this to poor writing or editing, but the feature is at times so confounding, it becomes frustrating. Even though seemingly every other line is devoted to providing exposition, the more the characters try to make sense of the situation, the further the film drifts from making any sense.

So indecipherable is the narrative that one may be hard-pressed to identify who or why we should root for anything. With no clear motivation beyond Keitel's Eion wanting to rule the world, 'Kill Code' is so unsuccessful at delivering any message that even the sub-90 minute runtime tests one’s patience. Filled with dialogue that would make your head hurt if you tried to discern any cogent message from it, the feature is filled with what sounds like philosophical discourse on the nature of free will, but is actually disconnected gibberish that sounds like it was written by AI.

Speaking of AI, even though it can be felt the film was shot on a shoestring budget, it still doesn't excuse the blatant use of poorly generated effects. More colourful than the rest of the film yet still with an unshakable uncanny valley feel to them, the AI-generated sequences can be a fun little insert, but immediately break away from any sense of reality and just make the overall feature feel cheaper than it already is.

Somehow having attracted a slew of recognisable names, such as Keitel, Frank Grillo, Tyrese Gibson and Brett Cullen, 'Kill Code' lacks any positive attributes and fails to deliver in any regard, from its convoluted story that somehow lacks basic structure to poorly written characters and shoddy special effects.

Disappointing, irritating and most egregiously – boring, the film serves as a prime example of how not to tell a story, resulting in frustration, befuddlement and ultimately dismay. To warn one, asking to avoid this film at all costs, would be an understatement.

Score: -1/4