aneueproject
Creator ID26-11-00-0102
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Film Review
Written by Kineograph
A white-haired traveller who cannot remember his own past crosses the ruins of a dead civilization — while soldiers hunt him for the power he picked up, and a woman who knows him better than he knows himself comes looking.
Project Zodiac is the first chapter of a larger story. It introduces its hero, its world and its mysteries, and ends on a cliffhanger, mid-fight, without resolving them. This review judges it as an opener — on the strength of what it sets up — rather than as a finished film.
This review discusses how the chapter ends. If you would rather watch the film first, we recommend you do, and then come back.
“He’s Been Gone A Long Time”
The film opens in memory, or something like it: a sunlit village street, a young girl with long dark hair smiling as she shoulders a makeshift wooden tube like a toy gun. The narration sets the terms — “He’s been gone a long time. Long enough that nobody remembers what he was.” Then the tone drops: a young boy leans over a woman lying on the ground, a tear on his cheek, calling for his mother, and is told to go back to his father. Whatever happened here is the wound the whole story is built on, and the film shows it to us in fragments rather than explaining it — the right instinct for an opener, even if the fragments are all we get.
“You Don’t Remember”
The adult traveller is a genuine design success: white hair, red goggles pushed up on his forehead, a rust-red scarf, ruined structures behind him. The film’s first subtitle for him is also its thesis — “You don’t remember.” He walks, scarf trailing, into a dusty market street, where a woman speaks to him as if resuming an old conversation — something about a time when he was almost happy (the audio is garbled here; the film’s burned-in subtitles carry much of its dialogue more clearly than its voices do, a point I will come back to). Then the soldiers move in: “That’s him. Wait for my mark. Don’t let him through. Take him alive.”
Best Scene (4:00)
The frozen bullet
In extreme close-up — white hair, red goggles, the scarf pulled up over his mouth — a bullet hangs frozen in the air beside the traveller’s head. Time has stopped around everyone except him, and for the first time the film shows us, instead of telling us, what he picked up.
I should be honest that the moment is double-edged: a frozen casing can read as a deliberate slow-motion power effect or as the generation holding its breath, and this film gives you evidence for both. But as staged — the stillness, the scale of the close-up, the whole hunt pausing around one man’s face — it lands as a power moment, and it is the image this chapter will be remembered by. Every origin story needs one frame that promises what the hero could become. This is Zodiac’s.
“I Found You”
After the confrontation, a woman reaches him — someone who knows what he picked up, and who has clearly been searching: “There you are… I found you.” It is the chapter’s most important arrival and the film knows it, placing the title card right on her heels. Then, for its final minute, the film cuts to a sunlit ruined temple: the traveller fighting two cloaked attackers hand to hand, fire burning at the left of the frame, a body already on the ground at the right — and simply stops there, on a cheerful audio sign-off of “Thanks for watching!”
Nothing is resolved: no escape, no capture, no reunion with the father the brief promises, no explanation of the twelve or of what the traveller carries. As a cliffhanger it is effective in the narrow sense — I do want the next chapter. But an opener still has to stand on its own feet for six minutes, and this one leans hard on atmosphere and one great moment to carry a story it mostly postpones.
The Seams Show
The craft is the chapter’s weak flank. The traveller’s face and apparent age morph between shots; his scarf and goggles change position. Most noticeably, the flashback child reads as a girl in the opening shot and as a boy a minute later — in a story about identity and memory, an inconsistency like that, intentional or not, confuses exactly the thread the film asks you to hold. Market crowds melt at the edges. And the audio is frequently mumbled or garbled, to the point where the film’s own burned-in yellow subtitles are routinely clearer than its spoken lines — helpful, since they are part of the film, but a telling sign of where the generation struggled. None of this sinks the chapter; all of it keeps the chapter from floating.
Final Thoughts
Project Zodiac is a vivid, unfinished first chapter — a hero, a wound and a frozen bullet, in search of the story they belong to.
I would recommend it to sci-fi viewers who enjoy world-building openers and don’t mind a cliffhanger: the desert ruins, the traveller’s design and the bullet moment are worth six minutes on their own. Whether the promise pays off depends on a chapter that, as of this version, does not exist yet — the project itself describes this cut as not final. I hope it arrives. The poster credits this work “Created by Ng Ketian”, and whoever finishes it will have a strong foundation to finish.
Scene Breakdown
0:18 — Flashback: a young girl smiles in a sunlit village street, a makeshift wooden tube shouldered like a toy gun.
~1:00 — A young boy leans over a woman lying down, a tear on his cheek: “Mom! Mom!”
2:00 — The adult traveller in close-up — white hair, red goggles, rust-red scarf, ruins behind him. Subtitle: “You don’t remember.”
3:00 — The traveller from behind, scarf trailing, walking into the dusty market street.
~3:00–4:00 — Soldiers move in: “That’s him. Wait for my mark. Don’t let him through. Take him alive.”
4:00 — Best Scene: the bullet frozen in the air beside the traveller’s head.
~4:30–5:00 — The woman finds him: “There you are… I found you.” The PROJECT ZODIAC title card.
5:42 — The ruined-temple fight: the traveller against two cloaked attackers, fire at the left, a body on the ground — and the chapter ends, mid-fight.
0:18 vs ~1:00 — The flashback child reads as a girl in the first flashback and as a boy in the second.
Throughout — The traveller’s face and age morph between shots; his scarf and goggles change position; the market crowd figures morph; and the dialogue is frequently mumbled and garbled — the burned-in subtitles are often clearer than the audio.
4:00 — The frozen bullet sits somewhere between an intentional slow-motion power effect and an artifact — the review treats it as the power moment, with the ambiguity stated honestly.
An entry in the Higgsfield Global Film Festival. The film’s poster credits the work “Created by Ng Ketian”; the project is aneueproject, based in Singapore.
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