WFG RATING: B+

Vision Films presents a Cinemachine production. Directed by James Fox. Produced by Tyler Farr, Gary Dover, Mikayla Iverson, and Colleen Keane. Written by James Fox and Amy Kay DuBoff. Cinematography by Alex Simon. Edited by Dessiree McFarland.

Stars Mikayla Iverson, William Benedict, Charla Bocchicchio, Dano Colon, Bryan Douglas, and Jeff Larson.

A game developer ends up in the fight of her life in this thriller.

Cara is a game developer who has cited burnout as the reason why she is taking a break and living in the countryside. However, the truth is she has left as she is planning to testify against her now former boss for assault and the trauma has really impacted her work. Trying to get a chance at cryptocurrency, things aren’t looking too bright. However, when her friend Llamaz sends her an encrypted message, she is asked to look at it. 

Cara slowly learns that her cryptocurrency rate begins to improve more than expected. She soon learns that the message may be one of importance, especially when she is offered $2 million to fully decrypt it. However, as she tends to uncover the message, strange things begin to happen as she finds herself the victim of identity theft and soon enough, she finds herself being tracked by a mysterious faction. Will she be able to overcome everything and learn the truth about the message?

This film from director James Fox is one of those “slow-burn” thrillers that start out a bit slow but then picks up the pace at the midway point. What is even more of importance is the protagonist of the film, who seems to be the only character seen as we get her point of view on things and the fact that she is one who is seriously flawed due to trauma, which results in an engaging and excellent performance from the actor in question.

Mikayla Iverson does a great job as Cara, a game developer who doesn’t want to reveal the truth to her parents out of worry and the fact they tend to still baby her during their conversations. She tells them she is recovering from burnout, but we soon learn through a session with a therapist via phone call that she is actually the victim of sexual assault from her boss and that she has left her job as the boss in question is now awaiting trial. At the same time, we see Cara attempting to make some money through the use of cryptocurrency and doesn’t seem to be rising as she hoped.

Once she gets the message in question from her former co-worker and still bestie Llamaz, this is where things start to get interesting. As she attempts to decipher the hidden messages in the block, things start to go up as her crypto goes up majorly and things start to go well. However, she soon realizes there may be a price for her actions as she soon finds herself involved in identity theft and a whole lot more. Could it be a message from aliens? Could it be a conspiracy? Or something worse. We soon see Cara being followed and tracked by a group of mysterious men and she soon realizes she must overcome her trauma to get the truth out of it all and this leads to Iverson churning out some great emotional depth in the role.

Crypto Shadows starts out as a slow burn but once things pick up, we see Mikayla Iverson at her A-game, as she brings emotional depth to her lead role. Definitely one indie film worth checking out.