By Sarah Kurchak

Dir: Stéphane Lafleur. Canada, 2022. In the wildly underrated 1993 Canadian film I Love A Man In Uniform, writer/director David Wellington explored the downward spiral of a small-time actor who became far too involved in his biggest role to date. It was bizarre and bleak and very 1990s in all of the right ways.

30 years later, a new Canadian classic in the making has emerged that tackles a similar story in a similarly zeitgeist-capturing way, but with a very different tone and different results.

Although he seems content enough in his middle-aged domestic life, David drops everything for two and half years when he’s selected to be part of a top secret project. His mission, should he choose to accept it—which he does without a second’s hesitation—is to participate in an elaborate simulation to predict the behaviour of a team of astronauts who have recently landed on Mars. The five-person team currently in space has started to report that they’re not getting along, and American and Canadian space officials are hoping that assembling five people with similar personalities and sending them out into the desert to live like their emotional space doppelgängers will provide some insight into how to solve their issues.

David and his crew mates initially throw themselves into their roles, but fissures soon begin to emerge. Between the five people in the simulation. Between the simulated experience they’re supposed to be creating and their own realities. And between the individuals and their senses of self. Some members begin to check out. Others dig even deeper. Eventually both the participants and their mission spiral out of control.

On paper, it sounds like the perfect setup for a twisted psychological thriller, but director Stéphane Lafleur does something arguably even more haunting with it: wry existential dread. The crew—especially David—aren’t losing their minds so much as they’re losing whatever belief they had that anything matters. It’s weird and funny and sad—but also maybe just a little hopeful.

If I Love A Man In Uniform explored man’s search for meaning for an era that expressed its pain through disaffection and angst. Viking does it for a time where we express our deepest fears and feelings through bleakly funny memes. 3/5 stars.