Review: Kooky ‘For the Plasma’ loses direction and meaning

“The boredom — it would have killed me sooner or later,” mutters a character in “For the Plasma.”

It’s a sentiment that hits awfully close to home in this annoyingly oblique exercise in arty affectation by Bingham Bryant and Kyle Molzan.

Set in a picturesque Maine fishing village, the film focuses on a young woman named Charlie (Anabelle LeMieux) who has taken a job assisting the moody Helen (Rosalie Lowe), who obsessively scans the nearby dense woods through a bank of closed-circuit surveillance monitors for potential signs of forest fires.

It turns out Helen also claims to possess the ability to mentally alter those images, which allows her to predict shifts in international financial markets.

If Charlie had abruptly turned and bolted out the door at that moment, it would have been entirely understandable, but instead she opts to stick around, whiling away the dreary hours walking through the forest or chatting furtively on her cellphone to an unheard friend.

Though Bryant and Molzan teasingly toss in some sci-fi and thriller elements, all shot in Super 16 mm by Christopher Messina, it all proves to be for mannered effect, as apparently do the characters’ robotic line recitations that pass as performances, especially those of Tom Lloyd as an oddball lighthouse keeper.

Attempting to provide a semblance of a common thread is a playfully quirky electronic score by noted Japanese composer Keiichi Suzuki, but it ultimately serves as yet another vexingly random element.

“For the Plasma” is many things — most of them pointless.

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‘For the Plasma’

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes

Playing: Arena Cinema, Hollywood