The Reservoir VR review: a melancholic graphic novel hybrid

The Reservoir takes place in a surreal mini-golf course that symbolizes the end of a romantic relationship—that time when the flame is still burning but will soon flicker out. In that dying light is a world of angst and pain. Which sounds like a terribly heavy-hearted experience, but in fact, despite a thick air of melancholia, it’s playfully executed by creator and producer Ric Carrasquillo, using the immersive animation platform Quill. 

Belonging to a small but growing number of productions, including SENS VR, that bring comic book or graphic novel-like elements into VR, The Reservoir (which I found via the Meta TV app) runs for about 15 minutes, depending how fast you move through it. The dialogue is written rather than spoken, displayed in speech bubbles. You progress to the next moment, or bubble, by pressing a button, which is the equivalent of turning a page.

The spine of the experience is a long and tetchy conversation between two romantic partners, Lewis and Elsie, who snip at each other as they move through the course, bringing to the surface various tensions and grievances. It becomes clear their progression through the course doesn’t follow the ordinary unfolding of time, encompassing months or longer in their relationship. 

In one trippy sequence, Lewis finds himself underwater, lots of dark and strange things around him, including a huge shark-like beast looking for a feed, while he makes rueful remarks like “I thought I could make it work” and “I guess I wasn’t ready.” The symbolism is obvious: the water represents him drowning in the relationship, or drowning in his own feelings.

As their conversation continues, the characters change positions in the tableau. Carrasquillo makes use of the 360 space by curving around us and requiring adjustments of our gaze—without overdoing it with crazy amounts of the head turning. The blackened background is contrasted with bright juicy colours: Elsie’s lipstick-red hair and pale blue dress, for instance, and the bright green astroturf around each hole. 

The environments are motionless, by and large, but sprinkled with basic animation, often related to something being discussed. After Elsie says “I don’t want to commute to the city every day either” for instance we hear the rumbling of a train and see the outline of one. Other zany touches play with scale and perspective—at one point shrinking Lewis down to figurine size, with Elsie looking down at him, a giant by comparison. When she says “you can’t say here” and he replies “I know, I’m just visiting,” it’s clear, again, that the environment around them is representative of their relationship: the symbolism of spaces. 

Near-constant deployment of non-diegetic elements (i.e. displaying written dialogue) is immersion breaking in the traditional sense, reminding us that we’re watching a contrived experience. On the other hand, Carrasquillo attempts a different kind of immersion, involving the absorption of words and the turning of virtual pages. The presence of literal text may not allow us to sink into the reality of the narrative world, but the more you get accustomed to The Reservoir’s structure and syntax, the more immersed in the story you become. It’s a lovely, thoughtfully made production; I’ve never experienced another quite like it.