Genre: Mystery/Sci-Fi
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Writer: Jimmy Ellis & John Malone
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Elizabeth Olsen, Laurence Fishburne, Lance Reddick, David Dastmalchian, Jacki Weaver, Randall Park, Joan Allen, John David Washington
Plot: Detective David Janus (Jake Gyllenhaal) is lying in bed spooning Iris Gallagher (Elizabeth Olsen) he kisses her on the neck and tells her how much she has changed his life for the better. He says that before she transferred to their precinct from Vice he was nothing and he is glad that she is not only his lover but partner in crime - and she's certainly better looking than his old partner. She looks at him and tells him she has some big news… She is pregnant. Janus has a shocked yet excited look on his face as he kisses her stomach. His phone starts ringing he reaches over and answers it, on the phone is his superior, Lt. Demeter (Laurence Fishburne), we can’t hear what he says but Janus says he will pick up Iris (there relationship is secret) and be there ASAP.
Janus and Iris enter a taped off crime scene, they are greeted by Lt. Demeter, he comments that he is glad his two best detectives could be on this case, it’s a tricky one. John spots the body in a gray suit. Janus wants to know whether anyone has touched the body yet, to which Demeter replies that no one has touched it as he knows how much he and Iris hate it when someone touches the bodies. Janus and Iris walk closer to the body and the cause of death is clear… A gunshot to the head. Iris looks through the dead man’s pockets but finds nothing, no identification. Janus then notices that the man has no fingerprints, to which Iris is freaked out by. Janus and Iris leave and tell Lt. Demeter to have the victim be taken to the morgue where Janus and Iris will perform some more investigations.
Arriving at the morgue to an already awaiting Janus and Iris is the victim’s body. They begin their investigations straight away by checking dental records up against his teeth. They also pull a hair stand and put it into a machine, it comes up with an alert saying ‘NO MATCH FOUND’. Janus and Iris are unsure what is happening it’s almost as if the man doesn’t exist. Iris says that she is extremely tired, she says that she is going home, however Janus says that he will stay and run more tests. He checks for anyone around and seeing nobody he kisses Iris. He swabs his mouth and gets a little saliva that is still left in his mouth, he puts the saliva in a dish and puts it in another machine to track DNA sources. It says that it will take 6 hours so Janus decides to head home for some sleep.
Janus wakes up and opens his work laptop to have a look at the new murder case, however when he logs into his work account there is nothing there of last night’s case. No files, no photos, no alerts. Janus is utterly confused and has no idea what is going on. He grabs his keys and drives down to the morgue. He arrives at the morgue and is shocked to see no body and no results or saliva in the machine. He runs over to the precinct and storms into Lt. Demeter’s office, he demands to know what is going on and why he had the gray suited man removed. Lt. Demeter has no idea what he is talking about and Janus goes on a rant to Demeter saying he hates it when someone touches his victims. As Janus is getting angrier so is Demeter, he demands Janus stop talking in that tone to him. Iris comes in and realizes it’s a bad time so she tries to step outside but Janus sees her and tells her to stay. He says that he knows he isn’t going crazy and asks Iris if she knows what happened to the gray suited man, she says that she has no clue and tells Janus to calm down. Janus didn’t like that and storms out of Demeter’s office. He walks to a big table in the middle of the precinct he stands on it and yells out to all the officers to ask what happened to the grey suited man, they all look at him with confusion and Iris pulls him down from the table. She tells him to go back into Demeter’s office. Demeter tells Janus that he wants him to visit the police psychologist, Dr Rhea. When he leaves he says one more time that he is not crazy.
He opens the door to the psychologist’s office, and Dr. Rhea (Joan Allen) greets him. Janus starts off by reassuring her that he is not crazy, he knows that the case is real. Dr. Rhea plays along with Janus and asks about the case. He tells her about the man in the gray suit and how he could find no matches to DNA, it’s as if the man didn’t exist. Dr. Rhea repeats the last few words Janus said trying to mess with his mind to make Janus believe that the man is only in his head. Janus stands and tells her that he is not falling for her mind games, he knows that it was real and he won’t be tricked into thinking it is not. Dr. Rhea tries to calm Janus down but to no avail he storms out of her office and starts walking home.
On his walk home Janus thinks someone is following him, he picks up his pace and keeps looking behind he sees another man in a gray suit, he gets out his phone and turns and starts running backwards, he takes a photo of the man following him, then the man starts running after him, he yells out asking Janus to stop and says his name is Gideon. Janus does not hear him and keeps running through alleys while knocking over trash cans to slow Gideon down. He continues running until Gideon is nowhere to be seen, he slows down and notices a familiar club. He decides to head inside to hideout for a while.
Janus enters the strip club and walks to find his former informant that helps run the club, Dion (John David Washington). Janus reminds Dion that he owes him a favor. Janus wants to view the CCTV. Dion tells Janus to follow him and takes him to the room. He grabs a chair and doesn’t take his eyes off of the cameras to look out for Gideon. Dion slyly asks to get some of his charges dropped for possession, for old times’ sake. He offers a lap dance with any girl he wants as compensation for getting charges dropped, but Janus declines. Dion keeps upping the number of lap dances, annoying Janus, before Janus snaps and tells Dion to shut up. Dion quiets down and leaves, telling Janus to yell out if he needs anything.
Janus feels like enough time has passed to now leave. He sees Dion one last time and thanks him, he tells him he will do what he can about those possession charges. Dion says that Janus is the man.
Late at night, Janus sits in the precinct running the picture he took of Gideon through the facial recognition program. When running it through the police database, no results come up. Frustrated, Janus runs the picture through the facial recognition program again, but this time set to look for results on the internet. Janus falls asleep at his desk while the program runs through its scan. When he finally wakes up, the program has pulled up several matches. All of the image matches feature Gideon toward the background of the picture. As he scans through the images, he notices something peculiar. Many of the pictures are several decades old, but Gideon's appearance never changes. He's always wearing the same gray suit and he doesn't appear to have aged at all.
At home, Janus tells Iris that he managed to get a picture of a man he believes to be involved in the murder case he's investigating. Iris reminds him that there is no body, no evidence, so there can't be a murder. Janus insists that something strange is going on, that for what ever reason nobody but himself can remember the murder. Iris tells him that there is no trouble with her memory. Janus asks if she remembers telling him that she is pregnant. Iris is baffled. She denies being pregnant and has no idea where Janus would come up with something like that.
Janus takes his work computer to the computer forensics department to be analyzed. The technician, Lonny Ceto (Randall Park), asks if there is anything specific he should be on the lookout for. Janus tells him that he believes a virus has recently deleted some important case files and was hoping that Lonny would be able to recover at least some of the files. Lonny manages to uncover a lone deleted film from the date Janus gave him. Lonny tells Janus that unfortunately the file is corrupted and that he won't be able to be viewed. Janus thanks Lonny for his time and is about to leave the room when Demeter enters, demanding to know what Janus is doing there. Janus doesn't have an answer. Demeter orders Janus to stop working on the imaginary case and focus his time and energy on real cases featuring real crimes with real victims.
With Janus' pregnancy claim lingering in her memory, Iris purchases a box of pregnancy tests. Back home, she takes one test, which comes up positive. She eventually tries every test strip in the box, and they all come up positive. Iris is shocked. She realizes that there may be some truth to Janus' claims.
Janus has Lonny pull up all the security footage within a half mile of every direction of the murder scene. Together they scan through hours of footage until Lonny points out that he has noticed one specific car heading toward the location Janus specified. Janus asks Lonny to just focus on finding all the footage containing that car. Lonny isolates the footage which shows the car continue heading in the same direction up until it is 1/10th of a mile from the crime scene. Every available security feed from within that distance is blank, which Lonny finds odd, but Janus isn't surprised at all.
Janus looks up the registration information on the vehicle in the security footage, finding that it belongs to a woman named Agatha Minos. Janus takes a trip to see Agatha (Jacki Weaver), who tells Janus that her son Calvin recently escaped from a mental institution. Janus asks her when she last saw him. A few days ago, she tells him. He came by to borrow some money and her car. She was afraid that he might hurt her, so she gave him what he wanted. Janus asks her what she thought her son would hurt her, and Agatha tells him that Calvin was locked up in the mental institution because he believed someone was constantly following him and became very violent when people refused to believe him. Agatha says she wishes she knew more information that could help him since she doesn't want her son doing anything regrettable, but she has no idea where he might be or what he might be up to.
At the precinct, Janus puts out an APB on Agatha's car. A squad car spots the car outside of a dingy motel and calls it in to Janus. He quickly gets up and starts to hustle out of the building, but he is stopped by Lt. Demeter. Demeter wants to know where Janus is off to. Iris steps in tells Demeter that Janus is working a car theft case and that he just got a report of the car's location. Demeter is satisfied and goes back to his office. Janus thanks Iris, who simply tells him to hurry up and finish what ever it is he's working on.
Janus heads to the motel and bursts into the room of Calvin Minos (David Dastmalchian). Minos explains that there are people who watch everything and control events throughout the world. They are all dressed in gray suits. Janus tells Calvin that he's going to have to arrest him for murdering the man in the gray suit. Minos is angry since he doesn't believe the controllers are real people, so how could he commit real murder. Janus tells him it's not his job to figure that out, just to bring him in and let the justice system do its job. Minos attacks Janus with a knife, but Janus subdues him. Janus then drags him out to his car in handcuffs, with Minos kicking and screaming.
As Janus is loading Minos into the back of his car, Gideon approaches Janus, telling him that they need to talk. Minos begins yelling at Gideon, but Janus shuts the door in his face. Janus asks Gideon if everything Minos says about the controllers is true. Gideon confirms it, but insists that the existence of the controllers must remain a secret or all of society throughout the world would collapse. Janus asks why, and Gideon tells him that the controllers have been ensuring that the world remains in order since the dawn of civilization, that there wouldn't even be civilization without the controllers. Gideon tells Janus that the controllers erased the memory of everyone with any knowledge of the murder and destroyed all of the evidence, but for what ever reason, the memory wipe didn't work on Janus. Gideon surmises that Janus' mind may have been too occupied on the case and too determined to solve the mystery for the memory wipe to be effective. The mind is still a mysterious thing, even to the controllers, Gideon tells him.
Janus tells Gideon he has to arrest Minos, it's his job. Gideon tells Janus that he can't allow him to do that. Gideon thanks Janus for caring so much about justice and order and tells him that the controllers will ensure that Minos never harms anyone again, but that if such information ever reached the public it would result in chaos and the controllers would have to start everything over again. Janus inquires what Gideon means by that, but Gideon simply smiles at him and asks if he is ready. Janus nods and tells Gideon that he can wipe his memory.
Janus is lying in bed with Iris, she says that she is excited to be a mother and asks Janus if he is excited too. He gives her a confused look and asks if Iris is pregnant, she looks at him weird as he looks excited. He kisses her stomach. The phone calls and he reaches over to pick it up. On the phone is Lt. Demeter, he tells Janus to pick up Iris he needs his two best detectives on this case. Janus looks over at Iris and tells Lt. Demeter that he is already with her. He says they need to get dressed and will be there ASAP. Iris asked why he told their superior, and he says they would have figured out soon enough. The two kiss.
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