I went to Sundance 2016 for the express purpose of covering virtual reality, and over the past week, I tried out all but a handful of the 30-plus VR-related experiences at its experimental New Frontier show. New Frontier is obviously just one part of the festival, but since last year, virtual reality has been big enough to merit a collection of the weirdest, darkest, and most sublime excursions that we’ve taken into other worlds. Here are some of the most interesting moments from my show — I've chronicled several more over the course of our Sundance coverage.
My five favorite VR experiences
I put my top three VR experiences (Giant, 6x9, and Kiya) into a larger Verge piece on the best of Sundance, but there was so much to choose from that I wanted to expand on that with a less formal overview of my five personal favorites. I’m hesitant to offer an absolute, objective ranking, so these are presented in no particular order — they’re all worthy of a place at the top of this year’s VR billing.
Giant
I described Giant to a few people at Sundance as "like those full-motion video adventure games from the ‘90s," which has not proved particularly helpful. But it’s the best analog I can think of to its combination of green-screened real actors against a stage-like CG backdrop. This doesn’t mean it’s retro; on the contrary, it feels like a medium that never quite worked back then is now coming into its own. Its deeply personal story — based on its creator’s childhood in Serbia — is briefly told but powerful.
6x9: An Immersive Experience of Solitary Confinement
The prevalence of extended solitary confinement, which the UN has deemed a form of torture, is one of the greatest disgraces of our generally broken American prison system. 6x9 captures not what it’s "actually like" to be alone in a cell for 23 hours a day, but how it felt to inmates who experienced it, with occasional dips into the surreal as they describe their mental state deteriorating. President Obama has recently called for prisons to reevaluate solitary confinement, but it’s still a pressing issue of debate — and one that benefits hugely from hearing first-person accounts.
Kiya
Kiya is the apex of Nonny de la Peña’s form of reenactment-based VR journalism. It pairs a computer-generated environment with the audio from a 911 call that captured a deadly incident of intimate partner violence, putting physical space and images to a disturbing moment. It’s a dark and frustrating piece to watch, especially because the common idea that VR "induces empathy" makes it sound like most women can’t imagine ending up with a man who feels entitled to their life. Put that aside, though, and you’re left with a compelling story told in a powerful emerging medium.
Available on the Sundance VR Google Cardboard app.
Dear Angelica
Oculus Story Studio's Dear Angelica wasn’t technically part of Sundance, but it easily deserves to be there, because its dreamlike illustrations are some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in VR. It’s also one of the first things that doesn’t feel like a translation of flatscreen media. People like to talk about how film took years to evolve beyond the language of theater, and while I’m not sure Dear Angelica is the moment that happens — please, please don’t start debating the Citizen Kane of VR — it definitely feels like nothing I’ve seen. It doesn’t hurt that it is, in fact, being created in VR.
Irrational Exuberance
Very little of the VR at Sundance offers any kind of true interactivity — you’re either staring at things or walking around them like a ghost. Irrational Exuberance puts you inside a giant egg in outer space, hands you a pair of Vive controllers, and asks you to start breaking things. Despite this, it’s not a destructive experience. It feels like peeling layers of clay from around a gem, clearing away debris until you’re left with a transcendent piece of otherworldly beauty. It’s nothing like reality, and that’s wonderful.
Five VR experiences I wanted more from
Virtual reality hardware often has to be described in terms of potential, rather than what’s available right now. So do the VR experiences people make for them. That was true of too many Sundance selections to list here, but I’ve singled out a handful of things that brought some kind of interesting aesthetic, mechanic, or story idea to the table, even if it hadn’t coalesced into something truly ready for the world to see.
Sequenced
Making a 2D-animated virtual reality series seems counterintuitive, but Sequenced demonstrates its promise. Imagine a post-apocalyptic anime turned into a puppet show, with triggers that vary the script based on what you’re paying attention to. What it needs now is more episodes, a less stilted script, a stronger art style, and better use of physical space. There’s a great moment, for example, where you can peer around a character to see what looks like a demon creeping up behind them. More of that, please.
Defrost
Defrost is a live-action Gear VR series particularly notable for its pedigree. It’s directed by Randal Kleiser of Grease and The Blue Lagoon, and its cast includes Rocky’s Carl Weathers and character actor Bruce Davison. It’s also got a great core idea: you inhabit a woman awoken from a cryogenic slumber in a sci-fi world with a sinister underbelly. But that idea feels far bigger than what Defrost has time to explore. The pilot lasts just long enough to establish the premise, and a couple of installments later your grandson is matter-of-factly explaining that he is an evil robot. That’s a lot to parse in an eight-part series that will probably be shorter than a single episode of Game of Thrones.
Available on the Sundance VR Google Cardboard app and the Gear VR's Milk VR app.
#100Humans
8i, the 3D scanning company behind #100humans, could revolutionize VR cinema. Its renderings of human beings are ridiculously accurate, with detailed textures and natural-looking motion. Unlike a 360-degree video’s images, you can walk around them like a hologram. But Sundance was not the place to see this applied. VR demands your entire attention, and #100humans is basically like staring intently at a Maya 3D model for ten minutes. It’s a great tech demo, but a tech demo nonetheless — in a show full of unusually mature VR experiences. It also proves that hearing people tell long stories about their kids in VR is just as interminable as it is in real life. Here’s hoping 8i finds a stronger place at Sundance 2017.
Sisters
Sisters started as the stationary haunted house ride linked above, but a new chapter of it showed up on the HTC Vive at Sundance. The project is an undeniably by-the-numbers series of VR jump scares about creepy children, but it gestures towards an experience that’s all about exploring a single, densely detailed space — the creators at VR studio Otherworld imagine it advancing into something like an escape-the-room puzzle. This is an idea that feels like it should be in a hundred VR games already, but I somehow haven’t come across one yet. It’s time to fix that.
Allumette
Like Dear Angelica, Allumette wasn’t part of Sundance but debuted during the festival. It’s an absolutely gorgeous little pocket universe, and while I’ve written more words in the link above, all I can say is that I want it to come out right this minute — to see if it can tell a full, satisfying story beyond the clip I saw this week. So far, signs point to yes.
Five VR experiences you should try right now
Some of Sundance’s 2016 selections won’t work without a high-end Vive or Rift headset. Others are still awaiting public release, and a few are full-blown art installations. But if you have access to a Google Cardboard or Gear VR headset, you can watch several of them (including some of the ones above) without ever setting foot on the slopes of Park City. With a Cardboard headset, you can install the Sundance VR app for Android; with Gear VR, they’re in a special Sundance channel on the Milk VR video app. iOS users have fewer options, but a couple are available through the standalone apps linked below.
Cardboard Crash
The creators of Cardboard Crash told me that they worked backwards from the fact that VR can cause nausea, imagining a situation where you might be sick (right before a car crash) but also passive (right before a self-driving car crash). That’s selling the experience short, though. It’s a clever first-person twist on the trolley problem that asks you to pick between three outcomes in an unavoidable crash — first with your gut instinct, then with access to the hard data that a self-driving car might have. Weighing that data isn’t a neutral activity, so who should be in charge of deciding how it works? The potential answers are surprisingly diverse.
Available on the Sundance VR Google Cardboard app and the iTunes Store.
Sonar
Horror about exploring alien worlds will never get old. Body horror will never get old. Sonar exploits both in a way that gestures toward Neil Marshall’s spelunking film The Descent and even Junji Ito’s manga Uzumaki. It’s hardly as fully developed as either of those, but it’s an extremely solid short film whose near-silence makes it all the creepier.
Available on the Sundance VR Google Cardboard app and the Gear VR's Milk VR app.
Collisions
Collisions was created through a Sundance residency program with VR camera company Jaunt, and the attention to cinematography certainly shows. Filmmaker Lynette Wallworth takes an aboriginal man’s story about 1950s atomic bomb tests and renders it in shots that convey both the life and the desolation of the Australian desert, building to a moment that inspires both awe and terror before bringing viewers back to (virtual) reality. It’s a strong argument for pushing VR video as far as it can go.
Available on the Sundance VR Google Cardboard app and the Gear VR's Jaunt app.
Waves
Many people still envision virtual reality as a goofy ‘80s and ‘90s (or earlier) science fiction conceit. VR studio Wevr and comedian / musician Reggie Watts absolutely run with that stereotype, creating a pleasantly bizarre combination of sci-fi pastiche and guided meditation. Waves is what would happen if Philip K. Dick teamed up with the Wachowski siblings to make a ‘70s B-movie scored by beatboxers.
Available on the Gear VR's Milk VR app.
Waves of Grace
Not to be confused with Waves above, Waves of Grace is a 360-degree video short about a survivor of Liberia’s ebola outbreak. It’s just one of several experiences put out by Vrse, which is also responsible for pieces like The New York Times’ refugee documentary The Displaced. If you’re just dipping a toe into virtual reality, it’s a great example of what the medium can be, produced by some of the best VR filmmakers around.
Available on the Sundance VR Google Cardboard app, Vrse for iOS, and the Gear VR's Milk VR app.