We Met In Virtual Reality takes a surreal look inside VR users’ souls

polygon.com:

The Polygon team is reporting in from the all-virtual grounds of the 2022 Sundance International Film Festival, with a look at the next wave of upcoming independent releases in sci-fi, horror, and documentary film.

Viewers not intimately familiar with the virtual-reality hangout platform VRChat might find it difficult to take in the importance of what its users are saying in the documentary We Met In Virtual Reality, because there are so many startling distractions. Director Joe Hunting used a virtual camera tool to shoot the entire movie inside VRChat, where users talk to him about how they’ve used the platform to get close to other people, forming relationships that sometimes cross over into real life. Many of his subjects tell hair-raising stories about their pasts, featuring alcoholism and addiction, family tragedies, abuse, mental illness, even a suicide attempt. It’s heavy stuff — but these conversations take place in a noisy cartoon carnival full of mix-and-match animal-robot-monster hybrids, and near-naked anime characters with outlandish anatomy falling out of skimpy fetish gear.

The contrast is dizzying, and it’s hard to keep the chaotic surroundings from trivializing what’s going on beneath the surface. This is a movie meant to introduce viewers to the real emotions people bring to their escapist fantasy worlds. But for most viewers, it’s more likely to simply be a confusing, exhilarating, context-free introduction to the fantasy world itself.

Part of Hunting’s commitment to shooting entirely within VRChat is that he doesn’t take time away from the platform to explain his goals or the setting. The doc just jumps straight into observing events, like the showcase where people introduce new VRChat spaces they’re