Lots of people familiar with the material here, but as somone with zero context, I watched the film and I don't get it.
Is it something where you need to know the backstory to get the importance? The premise just seems quite thin: (Spoiler alert) the guy behind the desk had his mind erased and the guy with the gun is an impostor.
I know it's not polite to armchair-critique a thing I could never have created myself, but I don't think this is a particularly good adaptation of this story. One change, I think, completely robs it of some of its impact, and I would have handled something else differently as well - but oh well.
> One change, I think, completely robs it of some of its impact
Which one?
One thing I didn't like from this adaptation is that the thought-devouring idea doesn't live inside Wheeler's mind, like in the story. They made it into a CGI blob. But I suppose the story is confusing enough, so making it invisible would have been too much.
You're missing a bit, like there is an entire top secert division of people that fight against mind erasing aliens, and there are a large variety of mind erasing aliens.
Yes, there is. I can see how someone not already familiar with the material would feel lost.
First, it's based on SCP, as other people have mentioned. Second, it's very dialogue/monologue driven, there's lots of exposition about a shared universe, vaguely hinted at, secret government agencies, conspiracies, etc.
The author chose a very topic which by definition is hard to understand: ideas (or memes) that do NOT want to be remembered. So a lot of what happens is discussing "dangerous" ideas that do not want to be remembered or discussed. There's a larger overarching plot, split across several related stories.
The guy with the gun was one such idea embodied in the physical shape of a man. It was confusing the boss on purpose. Wheeler was on to him from the beginning (because her boss doesn't have an assistant), but needed to get her boss on board with the idea first, before shooting the "assistant". Everything she does in the dialogue has this goal.
Is it something where you need to know the backstory to get the importance? The premise just seems quite thin: (Spoiler alert) the guy behind the desk had his mind erased and the guy with the gun is an impostor.
Is there more to it than that?