Lars Shrike Walks the Night

Somewhere in a distant galaxy… the protagonist of what looks like a 1970s era science fiction film wanders around the empty desert of a prison planet. He is desperate to escape but, suffering from amnesia, he must first work out who he is. Is he the product of a failed space experiment, a clone, or something worse?

Lars Shrike Walks the Night is Stranger Than Fiction meets K-PAX. The story explores the strange relationship between writers’ and their characters. The film examines reality, identity, and existence.

The ‘what is the nature of reality?’ question echoes films like Vanilla Sky, The Truman Show, Fight Club, Total Recall and Shutter Island. Although Lars Shrike Walks the Night is a very different kind of story, and with a very different budget, the protagonists of these stories ask the same two philosophical questions. Who am I? What is ‘real’ in my life?

So, who is Lars Shrike?

Kelsey Grammer plays Lars Shrike in this low budget science fiction film written and directed by Gary Walkow. I was expecting a classic redemptive story – a homeless amnesiac rediscovers his previous life. But, Lars Shrike Walks the Night takes a slightly different angle and does it with subversive humour.