‘We Met in Virtual Reality’ Review: An Immersive Look at How Some Folks Escaped the Pandemic
variety.comPeter Debruge Chief Film CriticVirtual reality is as good a place as any to meet people, especially during a pandemic. In documentary helmer Joe Hunting’s nonjudgmental plunge into the fast-evolving metaverse — set entirely in the realm of VRChat, where thousands of players reinvent themselves behind the avatars of their choice — we meet couples who fell in love online, hard-of-hearing outsiders who find a new way to connect with others and lonely souls who say their online friends saved their lives.
While the real world was losing its collective mind (Hunting started “filming” in December 2020), these folks were giving lap dances and house parties in cyberspace.At times, “We Met in Virtual Reality” — which world premiered at the (virtual) Sundance Film Festival last January, and now finds its way into (virtual) release via HBO Max — feels like a feature-length infomercial for this relatively new means of no-contact connection.
Except that VR has been around for years and years, and Hunting’s upbeat take on how “you can be who you’ve always wanted to be” seems more than a little Pollyannaish.
If anything, I expected virtual reality to look more real and a lot less virtual. Turns out VRChat is full of glitchy bugs. Full-body tracking gives users more control over how their avatars move, while instantly rendered animation struggles to keep up (props float, CG bodies break every time they budge and an in-world kiss looks as convincing as a pair of plastic Barbies mashed together).
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