A permanent sense of dread and the unknown hangs over this impressive low budget British psychological thriller from debut writer and director Si Horrocks. Filmed on location in London for a shoestring budget and on a single handheld camera, the film has benefited enormously from a successful Kickstarter campaign, pulling in independent funds to secure an international screening tour both at festivals and local venues. It’s another brilliant inspirational example of filmmakers marshalling their own resources and bringing their own unique vision to a broad audience.

Private psychiatrist David Wright (Tim Scott-Walker) is in utter despair; he is hounded by memories of his long lost love and the guilt over a patient’s recent and seemingly pointless suicide. At his nadir and contemplating his own suicide, David is contacted by the patient’s sister Erika (Jannica Olin) who is seeking answers to her brother’s death. United by their grief and loss, the pair investigate the suicide further and soon uncover a mysterious and sinister agenda that defies both their expectations.

Early in the drama of the film, one of David’s patients relates to him the theory behind ‘quantum suicide’, a concept that theorizes that the universe can be split open at the firing of a gun into two states: one of life and the other of death. It’s a lofty, ambitious concept to hit your audience with moments out of the start gate of your movie. Yet that’s all the more credit to Third Contact, a thriller that avoids the cliches and conventions of other projects made under similar circumstances. Writer and director Horrocks discards tired indie Brit cliches of gangsters and banal romance for cerebral science fiction, with a fine eye for minute detail and delivering in a fresh, fractured narrative style. Shot on a relatively inexpensive handheld camera, Horrocks has worked wonders with the films visual look. Filmed in a bleak and stark monochrome, the portrait of urban London comes to a vibrant and urgent life whilst remaining disconcertingly alien and hauntingly lonely. It reminded me somewhat of Christopher Nolan’s debut feature Following, also filmed for pennies and looking spectacular. This is matched by the eerie and otherworldly soundscape where sound and score seem to bleed into each other and become indistinguishable, not unlike the work of David Lynch.

Horrocks has taken on a one man band approach with the project but has still surrounded himself great talent to round out the project. Tim Scott-Walker is pretty terrific in central role, successfully convincing David’s fraying mental state and anguish and his increasingly fraught encounters with those he meets. It’s a world where no one can be fully trusted and supporting players are very effective at portraying characters whose allegiances are uncertain. That this team have managed to come up with such a well constructed project with minimal resources is nothing short of remarkable as is the films unique and dogged release strategy. On the basis of this, the concept of the writer/director with a larger budget is very enticing indeed.