Strangely, the premise and the outcome are quite similar to Hideo Nakata's Chatroom (the worst film I've seen at the festival so far). Black Heaven suffers from the same problems as Chatroom, and it too would have been better as a 30 minute short rather than a feature length film. This would have forced Marchand to invest in his story quicker rather than waste time with needless posturing. Each scene goes on longer than necessary and nearly 45 minutes pass before the film ever hints at a story worth watching only to find out none of it was worth watching.
The film opens with Gaspard and Marion (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet and Pauline Etiene), a young couple in love and entirely unaware of the path they will soon follow after finding a lost cell phone. Instead of attempting to return it, they decide to explore its contents. Soon they're following a girl they know as Sam (Louise Bourgoin) and a man known only as Dragon. Their amateur sleuthing leads them to discover Dragon dead in a suicide ceremony and Sam barely conscious.
A chance meeting a few days later finds Gaspard face-to-face with Sam once again. She reveals her true name to be Audrey and leads him to discover "Black Hole," a dystopic virtual world that's being used to influence people to commit suicide. All of this sounds like it could make for a decent film, but the script just doesn't have enough going on to make for a feature length film.
The acting is on par with what you would expect from a low rent PG-13 Hollywood thriller and the direction mirrors that sentiment with Marchand depending on titillation to keep the audience engaged, rather than ever committing to the story. In this day and age sex doesn't sell the same as it used to and if you aren't coming to the table with a fully fleshed out story then you shouldn't come to the table at all.
I wouldn't be surprised to see a domestic distributor such as Magnolia picking this one up for an On Demand and limited theatrical release, but I can't see it going much further than that. In all likelihood some American studio will get the idea to remake it, at which time I hope they inject a little more story as this one wasted a decent premise and my time.
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