Lapsis is a clever, low-budget, low-key, sci-fi satire, though it never quite builds a head of steam.

In the alternate present-day, a cable company called CBLR has a near monopoly on a new technology called Quantum. In order for its fiber optics to work, CBLR hires freelancers to trek through woods trailing cables wires behind them. Each cabler has a route that starts and ends by plugging the cable into an ominous looking 12-foot cube, and a whole culture has sprung up around this practice. People camp overnight, exchange trade secrets, and generally complain about the parent company. 

Ray Tincelli (Dean Imperial) is a working stiff whose job as a baggage handler doesn’t pay for his brother’s treatment. Jamie (Babe Howard) suffers from something called omnia, which is reminiscent of chronic fatigue syndrome. Ray’s buddy Felix (James McDaniel) runs an under-the-table scam, where he can buy Ray a previously used medallion (which is how you get routes in cabling) for a quick entry into the cabling world and its lucrative routes. The only catch is that Felix takes a 30 percent cut. Ray reluctantly agrees.

He, and we, are dropped into the woods of upstate New York for endless shots of workers walking in the woods with cable in tow. Writer/director Noah Hutton does a pretty good job moving this section along. Ray’s coworkers, most of whom would not feel out of place in Richard Linklater’s Slacker, fill him in on the rules and quirks of a cabler’s life. Anna (Madeline Wise) really knows the terrain. She’s been doing this on and off for years and knows the best routes and how to keep CBLR’s little robots (which look like a cross between Wall-E and a beetle) from outpacing you or else you lose your route. Turns out there’s a reason why she’s a bit ahead of the game.

Paranoia slowly creeps in. The previous owner of Ray’s medallion apparently did something bad because the coworkers start ignoring Ray and giving him the stink eye. Also, when a cabler tries to disable a robot with a tripwire, the robot manages to swab the wire and identify the cabler’s DNA. The offender is later hauled away, zip-tied in the back of a truck.

The deeper Ray enters this world, the more his working-class, blue-collar value system becomes tested. He believes that if you work hard enough and put the time in, you can succeed in achieving the American dream. Anna’s views are a little more cynical. Their debate is the only time when the subtext becomes text and Hutton gets his points across regarding the exploitation of workers that the gig economy proffers rather than the freedom it promises.

Lapsis is well thought-out and certainly well crafted, considering it was made on what looks to be an extremely small budget. It is also bursting with ideas, but it never quite gets over the hump but instead ambles along. The acting is good (Wise is wonderful) and the premise clever, but it’s a genial sci-fi satire that sheaths its claws. It could use more oomph.