Abel Ferrara raises more questions than he answers, but the pursuit of the truth (for the protagonist and for the audience) proves compelling enough.

Everyone has picked a side in writer-director Abel Ferrara’s cryptic new thriller “Zeros and Ones.” His pandemic-set mood piece concerns the clash of warring forces in a reality on the brink of collapse, where the images that cameras capture offer a distorted look into the abyss. Narrative lucidity hides under the artist’s self-imposed mandate to instill somberness at the expense of character and plot.