'The Matrix Resurrections' takes the red pill, but works more like a sleeping pill

Complicated in the best of times, "The Matrix Resurrections" is simply convoluted, a collection of flashy digits that don't add up to much of anything. Although director/co-writer Lana Wachowski slyly comments on the commercial nature of the undertaking and it's nice seeing Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss reunited, the better plan in hindsight might have been to completely reboot the system.

Instead, Wachowski has conjured a film that falls into its own kind of strange nether realm, mixing nostalgia and self-referential callbacks with what feels like a redo of fundamental elements, without satisfactorily explaining (despite scads of exposition) how we got from the earlier trilogy to here. Although the previous "Matrix" sequels marked a sleep decline from the freshness of the original, compared to this film's missteps all is forgiven.

Spoilers are understandably a concern with this sort of eagerly anticipated genre movie, but the one benefit of "Resurrections" is that it's not entirely clear what there is to spoil.