With elements from virtual landscapes and artificial intelligence making their way into our day-to-day lives, differentiating between reality and fiction has become increasingly tougher. Adam Stern’s sci-fi action flick, Levels, uses this liminal space between both worlds as its playground by presenting an intriguing narrative that pays homage to sci-fi classics like The Matrix series and The Thirteenth Floor. While the story retreads familiar grounds while handling themes of ethical, moral, and philosophical implications regarding artificial consciousness, having a strong emotional core allows the movie to carve out a distinctive character. While the inspired action sequences look really cool, accompanied by polished VFX, viewers will definitely crave more given how the makers have limited the number of action scenes. The makers didn’t intend to make the narrative a head-scratcher, which is why the ending of Levels neatly wraps up the threads of the events showcased throughout.
Spoilers Ahead
How Did Joe Learn About His Reality?
Set in a futuristic world, the movie begins by setting the narrative focus on Joe, a bookstore owner, who finds the love of his life in Ash, whose background remains a mystery to him. Aside from Ash, one of Joe’s close acquaintances is Oliver, the elderly local newsstand owner. One day, Joe meets with Ash, who seems to have something to share with him, but even before she gets the chance to, a mysterious person nonchalantly walks up to Ash and shoots her to death. The assailant disappears into an alley, and the trauma of losing his beloved gradually pushes Joe into crippling depression. Oliver tries to help Joe cope with his loss, but in his agony, Joe creates an emotional barrier around him that Oliver isn’t able to pierce.
Ash’s absence ultimately pushes Joe over the edge, and he tries to take his life—but much to his surprise, he is unable to do so—as it almost seems like an unseen force is stopping him. Joe has more, even crazier surprises coming his way, as he begins to receive texts from Ash all of a sudden. In a pre-recorded message, Ash reveals that she had a package delivered for Joe at his bookstore, which he needs to obtain for reasons still unknown. As Joe retrieves it, he gets chased by a number of strange operatives, whom he is able to neutralize using superhuman abilities—similar to how Neo and Agent Smith in “The Matrix” movies were able to. Questions continue piling up in Joe’s mind, and as he returns to his apartment, he is startled to see Ash communicating with him in real time. Ash reveals everything to Joe, which completely upends his sense of reality.
As Ash reveals, human civilization has progressed much in the field of technology, and using advanced machine learning, computation, ultra realistic rendering, and behavioral modeling, the creation of a lifelike virtual reality became possible, and was completed by a genius software engineer named Anthony Hunter, an employee of a tech R&D firm, Sentec, who was able to form an entire world populated by billions of simulacrums—virtual people who share traits identical to humans. Although Hunter had an unknown mentor who helped him to successfully create this world, which became Hunter’s sandbox to run numerous simulations over and over again. Using the virtual world, known as the Digital Universe, Hunter wanted to find answers to every problem that might plague humanity in the future, and with a world as his plaything, he could predict failsafe methods, possible solutions, and imminent crises simply by learning from the trial and error method. Hunter’s ideas were profitable for conglomerates, and with their backing, he soon became CEO of Sentech. However, the ethical implications regarding exploitation of simulacrums resulted in Hunter facing legal pressure, and he went undercover with his Digital Universe operations. Ash, a techie herself, was on her way to expose Hunter as she created a virtual persona to infiltrate one of his DUs and fell in love with Joe, who is a simulacrum, a virtual person. Joe’s world comes crashing down as he begins to doubt whether his emotions and feelings towards Ash were even real to begin with, or if his autonomy is compromised and all he does and feels are programmed into his system. He learns from Ash that Hunter killed her virtual persona himself after learning about her efforts to expose him. The package Ash asked Joe to collect contains confidential data that needed to be retrieved out of the DU to bring Hunter to justice—which is why Hunter sent his operatives to attack Joe when he was obtaining it.
How Did Oliver Help Joe?
Joe recognizes Hunter’s mentor, who is revealed to be none other than Oliver, the bookstand owner friend of his. In fact, Oliver was on the lookout for Joe and still has some level of control over Hunter’s DU, which allowed him to save Joe from the agents sent by Hunter and even rescue him while he was trying to take his own life. Ash requested Joe to ask Oliver to provide her a gateway into DU, as her access was terminated right after her virtual persona was detected and killed by Hunter. Meanwhile, Hunter sends his operatives into the real world to apprehend Ash, who seeks help from Oliver to get out of this mess.
While Hunter is all too eager to play god in the digital universe, Oliver and Ash are more sympathetic to the plight of the simulacrums, whom they consider equal to real people. Oliver realizes that Ash is truly in love with Joe, which is why she wants to re-enter the DU. With Oliver’s help, Joe and the virtual persona of Ash are once again reunited, but Joe can’t help but feel that, being a part of fabricated reality, his actions or emotions are never genuine. Ash’s return in the DU is noticed by Hunter, who realizes Oliver is the one helping them.
Fearing detection, Oliver pulls Ash out of the system and instructs Joe further about what he needs to do in the DU. The data Ash asked Joe to upload out in the world is a backup of the DU, which was created by Oliver to free them from the oppressive control of Hunter and end the cycle of being used as lab rats forever. Ash wants to save the simulacrums and be with Joe. However, Joe has to do it as soon as possible; the only reason Hunter hasn’t gone all out is because he needs to maintain a semblance of reality in the DU; otherwise, bending the laws according to his whim results in the creation of faulty, non-utilizable data, which risks corrupting the system.
How Many Levels of Reality Were There?
However, Hunter quickly takes control of the situation, as he manages to abduct Ash, kill Oliver both in the real and virtual worlds, and stop Joe from uploading the data. But as he is about to kill Joe by flaunting his control over Joe’s reality, Joe manages to break free somehow and kill Hunter’s virtual persona. Back in the real world, Hunter decides to destroy the DU, and as Joe and his world crumble apart, he is given a last chance to say final farewell to a captive Ash. Joe is now certain that the love he felt for Ash was more real than anything else in his life.
However, it is time for Hunter to get the shock of a lifetime as Oliver, whom he presumed to be dead, takes control of his reality and brings Joe back—this time in Hunter’s world. Joe manages to save Ash and kill Hunter, who is revealed to be just a rogue program created by Oliver. Later, as Joe and Ash are reunited, Oliver meets with them and reveals the whole truth. What Hunter and Ash assumed to be a real world is a higher level of virtual simulation compared to Joe’s own, and the real world is that of Oliver’s. Oliver reveals the lengths of advancement humanity has achieved at this point. There might be infinite levels of virtual simulation, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter which level Joe and Ash are at as long as they are together. They have empathy, which Hunter lacked, and while living inside a simulation himself, he tried to play god by creating further levels. Using the example of a grain of sugar, coffee cup, and saucer, Oliver, the presumably prime creator of the virtual simulation multiverse, is able to help the couple realize the foundation of their reality.
In Levels’ ending, as Oliver retires to his study, enjoying some classical music, he too inexplicably disappears, indicating that he too is not real and belongs to an even higher level of simulation. The one true creator(s), the person(s) made of flesh and blood who build the entire virtual landscape, remains unseen and unknown. Who knows, perhaps human beings don’t even exist as a biological species, and the only testament of their existence are these infinite levels of the digital universe.
