Written and directed by James Fox, co-written by Amy Kay DuBoff, a tormented game developer’s recovery in the countryside is interrupted when she uncovers a mysterious message embedded in a cryptocurrency algorithm. Launching a quest for answers which soon turns into a fight for her life. Starring: Mikayla Iverson, William Benedict, Charla Bocchicchio and Dano Colón.
James Fox and Amy Kay DuBoff had a good concept, a claustrophobic thriller with an unseen threat, driven by mystery but unfortunately there isn’t enough to unpack. It moves with a surprisingly slow pace, leaving a lot until the final scenes. At first, it purely feels like a drama and by the time the thriller elements enter the equation, it can feel too formulated.
It takes a very drastic turn that it hasn’t built a foundation for and loses its believability. It can also feel fairly inconsistent, its mention of abuse feels like a means to an end and the qualities of the leading character of anxiety and paranoia don’t match up with her actions. Using such a singular focus requires a solid leading character and sadly, Crypto Shadows doesn’t have one.
That’s not a comment on the performance from Mikayla Iverson, who does her best to bring Cara to life. Rather, it’s because she hits upon a number of stereotypes and is given a lot of unnecessary dialogue that doesn’t add much to her personality. For such a contained film, it rarely relies on the silence, instead having Cara spend a lot of time talking to herself which undercuts the tension it tries to build.
One of the aspects where the film struggles most is creating a gripping atmosphere, with so little happening for an extended period of time, it starts to lose your attention. Then when it does up the ante, it leans on special effects which was an unfortunate choice, going beyond its means and again losing its believability.
Crypto Shadows had a solid idea but a lacking execution. It moves too slowly and tries to ramp up the story too fast, throwing things off course. For the majority of the film, it plays the visual extremely simple which misses out on building an atmosphere. Eventually, it tries to bring special effects into the mix which were simply not in the budget to do convincingly. Ultimately, there is a story at work but the way that it plays out feels quite empty without a strong leading character or consistent plot.
FilmCarnage.com 
As a retired Geek (Network, Process, and Security Engineer for over 50 years), I found much of the techie talk surprisingly accurate and apt.
I agree with the criticisms and found the ending really disappointing.(unless there will be a sequel).
I would still give it 3 1/2 or 4 stars.
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Frankly, I lost interest after 45 minutes of a girl talking meaninglessly to herself, and about 2 million sighs. I think Cara deserves to become the first sigh-master!
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