Invention, a new indie film from director Courtney Stephens and co-writer Callie Hernandez, blends documentary and fiction to explore grief and alternative medicine. The film follows Carrie, played by Hernandez, who inherits a healing machine patent from her late father, a quack doctor involved in a pyramid-selling scheme. As she navigates his debts and legacy, she must decide whether to embrace his beliefs or reject them.
The film features cameos from low-budget directors, including Joe Swanberg as an engineer and James N Kienitz Wilkins as a lawyer. Cult writer Caveh Zahedi appears as a dope-smoking enthusiast eager to buy the patent. These performances add a deadpan, surreal quality to Carrie's journey.
Stephens and Hernandez draw on real-life parallels: Hernandez's own father, Dr John Hernandez, was an alternative medicine evangelist with local TV fame. The film questions whether Carrie—or Hernandez—can reconcile skepticism with grief, using the machine as a metaphor for faith and healing.
Invention's style recalls Shane Carruth's Primer, but where Carruth might have made the machine functional, this film leaves its efficacy ambiguous. The result is a quietly bizarre meditation on truth and loss.
