Doc Corner: 'We Met in Virtual Reality' on HBO Max

By Glenn Dunks

I recently rewatched Steven Spielberg’s largely unsuccessful Ready Player One, a movie with many faults that are not relevant right now. But key to its failings is how completely uninterested in virtual reality it actually is. For all of its effort in setting up its admittedly rather awe-inspiring virtual world, it completely misunderstands (or, more likely, is just uninterested in exploring) why people would turn to such a space in the first place.

I thought of Ready Player One a lot as I watched Joe Huntings’ We Met in Virtual Reality, which is shot entirely in a VR landscape with all the boxy, hyper-coloured, anime-infused glory. This isn’t an action movie though. Rather, it’s a sweetly affecting documentary about online connections and the way some people feel more at home with a dragon tail and hooves than they do in the real world.

It’s easy to watch Huntings’ film with something like skepticism. A permanent cocked eyebrow, suspicious of what its being shown. Virtual reality is, after all, still something that many of us do not engage with or understand. But I suppose much like the internet’s early days of messenger apps, livejournal accounts and message boards, the appeal becomes clearer and the movie ultimately won me over with its humour, its sweetness and its poignancy. Much was made of WandaVision’s “what is grief, if not love persisting” line and all power to them, I suppose; but We Met in Virtual Reality has a scene where a deaf girl with pussycat ears (natch) giving an impassioned monologue about the death of her brother and I quietly wept. I expected none of this going in to this HBO Max documentary, but it has quickly become of my favourites of the year so far.

Hunting’s film, as I mentioned, is filmed entire within virtual reality. We never see the human faces of any of his subjects. There’s nothing quite like it that I can think of, even in the realm of animated non-fiction. Hunting captured some 200 or so hours, a technical achievement that doesn’t even make sense to me. I almost don’t want to know how it was achieved, lest some of the movie’s enchanting magic fade as a result. Visually and dramatically in many ways it reminded me of Mamoru Hosoda’s Belle from 2021 mixed with the early days of Big Brother before it became a casting room for people who want to sell diet cleanses and swimwear on Instagram. I’m not even sure how some of what they’re able to do in virtual reality works, like when during a virtual wedding ceremony, the bride, wearing a very buxom white dress, jumps into her virtual husband’s arms. Maybe one day I will enter this sort of world and figure it out, but for now I just wanted to live in their world and engage with these people for whom virtual reality is more than just a concept for science fiction novellists and filmmakers to treat as a new world to fill with guns and retrograde ideas around sex and bodies.

There’s Jenny with fluorescent pink hair who teaches sign language in a virtual classroom; DustBunny, who is a virtual belly-dancing instructor, and her long-distance partner Toaster; and DragonHeart and IsYourBoi, another couple who met through virtual dance community. We learn that some of them have met in real life, although the COVID-19 pandemic means it was harder to do so given border closures. Each are given the time and the patience by Hunting to examine for themselves what brings them to the VRChat platform although none seem entirely sure about what the future could hold.

There is probably a lot to the subject of virtual reality that Hunting doesn’t even broach the subject of. It was probably wise to eschew all of the philosophical stuff about what VR could mean for society as a whole, and instead focus on what it means for these five characters. For them it is largely about finding a community online that they cannot find anywhere else. So, truly, the next logical step up from when I would spend hours with my online friends on movie message boards (several of whom I remain good friends with to this day!) Entering this world allows them to follow creative endeavours they would never be allowed to do in real life. Likewise, find new ways of expressing feelings and dreams and hopes and desires that, for whatever reason, remain harder to grasp in reality.

We see a diverse and inclusive world. It’s quite a queer film, too, which I loved. It is a film that continuously surprised me scene after scene, which is rare. You could perhaps say that Hunting’s voyeuristic and outsider’s take on virtual reality is the antithesis of what VR is for its participants, but instead it’s an open door into a new world that I found overwhelmingly engaging. Despite the images we see on screen here being pixelated globs of colour, We Met in Virtual Reality feels just about the most honest and open documentary of the season.

Release: Now streaming on HBO Max

Awards chances: I’m not sure Oscar voters are going to be this hip to technology (Flee was their first time nominating an animated documentary), but it’d be fun to see a real effort made by awards bodies to push it into the race.

Comments

[Alex Hartsell]

This film looks hideous and ugly! Forget it! I would rather watch Ready Player One ten times more than this ugly looking movie for an animated documentary! Flee is still the best Animation Documentary that can't not be beat!

[McGill]

I completely agree with you about films that get to the heart of how everyday people actually interact with technology. Viewers seem taken aback by them and dismissive of them, especially if the people they are about or the presumed viewers are considered “unimportant”.

I felt a little bit this way the year that “The Social Network” and “Scott Pilgrim” came out. “The Social Network” crammed the newness into a standardized tv narrative box focusing on money and rich people, with an inherent disdain for whatever was happening with mental adjustments to tech interaction.

“Scott Pilgrim” wasn’t condescending to its subject but caught both the fun imaginative part and the everyday people engaging in the story. For all its wonderful goofiness, I thought it was more “real” than “The Social Network” (an opinion which would receive vitriol back in the day).

You mention “Ready Player One” and I see your point on that. For me, it was like “The Social Network” in that it looked at the outside of things, as if it was something other people did, but missed out on the interior fun and aliveness.

I compared “Ready Player One” that year with “Valerian (And Laureline) and the City Of a Thousand Planets”. “Valerian” had eye-popping colour, a lively script, sympathetic characters, and wove it’s virtual reality set pieces into a necessary part of the action. (And the most wonderful opening section of the many years of interplanetary greetings).

I really like the way you explain how this documentary captures how imaginative the players are and how so many varieties of feelings are expressed. It sounds like we are looking at something from the inside, not the outside.

[Lynn Lee]

This is a very compelling review. I'm not quite sure I *want* to be sucked into this universe, but it does sound like it would be a fascinating experience.

[will james]

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