Manipulation review: a Da Vinci Code-style thriller lost in its own fog

David Balda's thriller Manipulation strands its audience inside what our reviewer calls a preposterous plot, "like being trapped in a Ferrero Rocher advert – with a creamy Dan Brown filling." The film opens with young novice Matteo (Radoslav Gavlas) being initiated into a tentacular secret society based in Prague.

From there, the story runs on impenetrable shenanigans. The Guardian's reviewer likens Balda's plotting to "an attempt to recall the plot of a Da Vinci Code-style potboiler after huffing tailpipe fumes." That's the mechanism of the film's failure: it gestures at conspiracy-thriller furniture without building a coherent engine underneath it.

What is the order actually doing?

The Prague-based order is run by the iron fist of the Master (Pawel Lawrynowicz). Its daily business is blackmailing influential figures and amassing power-bestowing information. Matteo gets dispatched to infiltrate the Catholic church — though, as the review notes, good luck understanding precisely why.

The motive arrives by trauma. After Matteo sees his cultist father (Predrag Bjelac) threaten to torture a defector's children, he suffers a crisis of conscience. The Master then sends him to Bologna for some Illuminati rest and recuperation, where he meets his answer to Umberto Eco: a circumspect Professor (Pavel Kriz), who explains the corrupting influence of such cabals through the centuries.

What is the Master really after?

The Professor believes the Master seeks the alchemical secrets of Holy Roman emperor Rudolf II — the vials he constantly swigs from presumably aren't available from the hotel minibar. For a story about an all-illuminating conspiracy, the review finds it "a dense yet vague mess," consisting of the Master's espionage, the church's counter-espionage, and implausibly conducted press whistleblowing in the "Prague Times".

An over-stuffed gaggle of characters crowds these convolutions. After the Bologna stint — during which Matteo apparently strays into a gap-year stock photoshoot — he falls for Anna (Anna Ctvrtnícková), daughter of a church librarian (Féodor Atkine). The librarian was booted off the council for trying to warn them about a double-dealing priest (Heino Ferch).

Does the film work on any level?

Not on the level of craft fundamentals, per the review. It's littered with priggish acting, sore-thumb plot contrivances, and dunderheaded dialogue that reads like characters trespassing on their own narration. The review quotes one line as evidence: "The clouds seem to be gathering – and not just outside!"

Two things survive the wreckage. Balda shoots the film with a smartly brooding look, and the intrigues belatedly spark a little heat through sheer force of accumulated twists. The reviewer's verdict on the sect at the film's centre is withering: "as far as all-powerful sects go, this is more Eyes Sewn Shut."

What does this change for viewers? Not much — Manipulation joins the pile of candle-lit occult thrillers that mistake atmosphere for story, and it suggests that a Prague setting and Eco-inflected professors can't save a script that never clarifies its own conspiracy.