Nothing screams safety more than being stopped by armed guards when you attempt to enter a location. This is exactly how Safe and Sound opens. A girl and her mother are coming into the city, and it abundantly clear she doesn't fit in. First, there's the juxtaposition of fashion, and the complete lack of any access.
Foster (Annalise Basso) is our protoganist. She's new... to everything. Her first day at school is filled with learning experiences, limited by the fact that she does not have a Dex. The Dex is something worn around the wrist, a computer interface that people can interact with, use as a computer, and is linked to education and almost everything else.
It doesn't take her long to get a Dex, even though her mother does not want her to get one. There's another layer of story there, with high school being a troubled time for youth like Foster. She also, at first, doesn't know how to use the Dex. She contacts customer service, and we see her falling rapidly enamoured the voice of Ethan, a customer service rep who is there to help.
But it isn't long before he needs help, and the megacorp wants someting in return. Meanwhile, Foster just wants to fit in. When people start to fit in (or don't fit in), themes of coercion and control tend to emerge in the plot.
They persist through the entire story. Then at the credits, I learn that this is based on the short story :"Foster, You're Dead", and this is very different in terms of plot lines. It isn't bad - and that's a good thing. What was a story about capitalism pushed to the extreme and more and more devices needed to protect against enemy threats is taken to a different place.
A place where information itself is the enemy, as opposed to bombs, or guns, or the threat of existential elimination. This is another incredibly sophisticated story, well told, and it shows that Philip K Dick was an enormous visionary, and I'm so pleased that the production team were able to take his hints to another level.
I know that I am watching these things out of sequence. That's fine as far as I am concerned, they're not meant to be interconnected stories, but the repeated use of Runciter as a name for things, which I encountered first in Ubik - is an interesting sort of persistence throughout Philip K Dick's many worlds.
This one was a world full of terror, not of the "oh look, a. building exploded", but the terror that is insidious and layered, in the processes of society. Bus tickets, credit cards, or a mobile phone - or in the universe painted by the Safe and Sound film, a device worn around the wrist, and a little gel placed into the hear to let you hear.
I only have a few of these films left to watch, and I am going to be sad when I'm through all of them. The good thing (for me) is that there is so much more material from Philip K Dick with which to engage. He had a long career, and wrote a lot of stuff, and I am looking very much forward to absorbing it all.