I went in cold other than know there was some kind of twist, though iTunes blurb and the first few minutes make it pretty clear. My first instinct was that this was more of a What Dreams May Come scenario than a Jacob's Ladder scenario, but it wasn't until they kept on doing those weird camera pans that I figured out what was really going on.
This one reminded me a lot of The Secret, in that there were a few different directions that it could have gone that would have resulted in a genuinely good movie, but the director decided to do all of them at once and ended up with such a farrago that they didn't even bother finishing the CGI. Like, this would have been (or been at least derivative of) a perfectly good Black Mirror episode if the game was a way for the son to essentially ask his dead dad for advice on whether or not to commit a murder, by making a realistic simulation and seeing what he'd do in a similar scenario. But the son seems to have already made up his mind, and is pulling all of the strings in the game rather than letting them play out on their own? I was genuinely confused as to what that dynamic was supposed to be.
Either way, I genuinely enjoyed the tropey video game stuff once they started leaning into it, to the point where it would probably have also worked better as a Spike-Jonze-dark comedy if they had fully gone in that direction.
It also reminded of The Secret because of the heavy parent-child sex themes?! Whatever the purpose of the simulation, the kid has essentially created a very realistic deepfake of his parents having passionate sex on a boat. Like, he's coded it so his dad can't run a red light, but he can have sex with an NPC for money?
This was a wild one. Can't wait for the episode.