“I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

That is the prevailing theme  at the heart and conclusion of my viewing  of Graham Skipper’s Sequence Break. It’s in the title of course—and in an onscreen definition, yes, this movie spells out what a sequence break is—but Skipper does a fantastic job building on this theme with other themes and ideas: love, routine, the need for healthy relationships, reach for your dreams, etc. and what we viewers are given a thematically solid, well crafted, Cronenbergian nightmare that is as full of hope and love as it is with moaning fleshy arcade cabinets and wonderful ‘80’s synth score that is absolutely one of the stars of the film. The sound goes a long way to help bring this nightmare to life. 

Without spoiling much, if anything, there are two timelines at play here: one where the end result is mind- and soul-crushing imprisonment and enslavement to one’s routine, the same loop playing out over and over again until the world is transmuted and is, at least for our protagonists, destroyed. Then there is the infinite, the out of the box timeline where a butterfly flapping its wings here results in a storm across the world. It is a timeline full of permutations and random chance, and it is only available to a person if they are willing to break… well to break the sequence.

The plot is basic, and that is a good thing. A young man is absorbed in the restoration of old arcade equipment, to the point of total disregard to reality and it spirals from there. You know the cycle: boy is obsessed with one thing, boy meets girls, boy creates crazy lovecraftian/cronenbergian arcade cabinet, boy falls in love (with girl and with the strange erotic, eldritch machine), bad things happen (lots of oooey gooey practical effects here) and then the end of the film comes along. Did the boy choose his love of the woman or the machine*? You will have to watch to find out.  

There are a lot of really solid production choices on display here by Skipper. He chose to go largely practical with his effects and that—for me—is to his credit. I love practical effects, and the ones here are top notch, which had me recalling some of the greats as I watched. He clearly wanted a Videodrome feel to this and achieves that aesthetic admirably. My only complaint is that this film was clearly made on a budget, and I wish that Skipper and co had more money to work with which would have given us more and more slimy practical effects. The score is also a lot of fun as it’s full of both throwback retro synth joy.