‘LifeHack’ Review: A Pulse-Pounding Screenlife Heist Film

variety.com:

Siddhant Adlakha Screenlife movies and producer Timur Bekmambetov go together like wine and cheese. An off-shoot of found footage, films in this category take place entirely on computer and/or phone screens, a formal premise that, in its brief history — since the 2002 experiment “The Collingswood Story” — has evolved in remarkable ways.

Bekmambetov has produced horror (“Unfriended”), dramatic thrillers (“Searching”) and even Shakespeare (“R#J”) in this mode, and with the Ronan Corrigan-directed “LifeHack,” the genre now moves dauntlessly into heist movie territory.

Your mileage may vary, but for fans of the format, it’s an absolute treat. Traditionally, heist films involve slick, seasoned professionals moving through space, towards one defined target, like the vault in “Ocean’s 11.” However, the age of cryptocurrency and digital wallets allows the debuting Corrigan to flip these expectations on their head, via a tale of four lonely teenagers with something to prove.

There’s a remarkable amount of visual detail involved in “LifeHack,” to the point that a Screenlife premise seems like the only way this story could’ve been conceived.