The best virtual reality from the 2015 Sundance Film Festival

The Verge

Oscar Raby’s project is billed as a multimedia documentary, but we experienced it more as a nightmare. Assent is addressed to Raby’s father, a Chilean army officer who was present during the brutal execution of members of his regiment in the aftermath of a coup. You begin in a crude representation of Raby’s house; by shifting your focus, you’re transported to an area near the hill where Raby’s father witnessed the massacre. Raby describes the shooting, and the events leading up to it, in vivid detail; the father is mute as his son forces him to re-live what may have been the worst day of his life. If there’s a hell, it probably feels a lot like Assent.