Anyone looking to avoid a movie about insufferable people could easily stay away from Creative Control, but the movie is more than that. It’s working on themes that would later be fully realized in the Safdie brothers’ ecstatic Uncut Gems, most notably a conversation about the suffering needed to create the technologies that people take for granted.
But while Creative Control’s characters are hollow shells, the movie itself is earnestly interested in their fates. Technology can spin out universes all of its own, and it’s easier than ever to get wrapped inside them. Creative Control asks if people can pull themselves back once they’ve gotten sucked in.