This year’s London Breeze Film Festival runs from 21–25 Oct. I am reviewing a handful of films from its 11th edition, which has the festival’s biggest in-cinema programme to date. Tonight, 23 Oct, it presents Synthesized (Chris Green, 2026).
With music composed by Andy McCluskey (OMD), the film also features Look Mum No Computer, aka Sam Battle.
Martyn (Thomas Turgoose) is a computer and synth geek whose wife, Valkyrie (Sacha Parkinson), despises him. When she returns from bingo “smelling of sex”, he has cause for worry. He befriends Tia (Hannah Traylen), a vulnerable woman he struggles to cope with; her story when she is admitted to a mental health facility is the catalyst for this caustic curiosity.
Martyn, the everyman you wouldn’t look at twice on the street, becomes an agent of revenge, doling out his own brand of justice. His date, Jasmine (Kiran Landa), finds herself with a conflict of interest between the professional and the personal.
The synth is secondary, though the theremin suggests both romance and danger. That this most mild-mannered of men might be both musician and murderer feels far-fetched.
Turgoose is particularly good as Martyn, troubled and in trouble through his own choices and the events around him. The customer, the wife, the girlfriend. The boss, the bullies, the beats. The dead eyes of a vigilante inside the head of a man consumed by his own creation.
Green’s film isn’t simply a linear narrative. Phone conversations inspire synth patterns, while disembodied voices and influencer videos seem to communicate directly with Martyn. These elements are necessary, yet confusing.
This is a strong psychological horror, with a protagonist who may gain your sympathy, whatever his motivations or provocations. The film has a twisted heart and a truly strange conclusion with a blackly comic core.
For me, it succeeds in offering something that bit different. And ultimately, the track that counts most is a reinvented OMD number, “Enola Gay”, with vocals provided by none other than Kim Wilde.
Synthesized is at the London Breeze Film Festival at Riverside Studios, 23 Oct, as part of the ‘3 for 2’ Dark Comedy Fright Night’ evening.