Sky Cinema continues to invest in film distribution of its own, and its latest is Anon, a sci-fi thriller from Gattaca director Andrew Niccol.

The film is heading into cinemas and is on the Sky service at the same time. Thus, Sky gets to sell the world a cinema campaign, which in turn tends to rocket viewing numbers on its own set-top boxes. In the case of Anon, it stars Clive Owen and Amanda Seyfried, and it’s set in a world where people struggle to stay anonymous online.

That’s because everyone’s history in this future world is accessible, and world-weary investigator Owen thus finds himself poring through people’s memories to get to the bottom of mysteries. Seyfried’s character, though, is a ghost. She has no digital history, and that’s what firms the start of Anon’s mystery.

The film itself owes something to the writing of Philip K Dick, although it’s not directly adapted from one of his tales. Rather, Niccol has clearly taken influence from Dick’s work. It’s a shame, then, that after a promising set-up, Anon as a movie starts to run out of steam. Considering the film comes in notably shy of 100 minutes, that’s a real pity, but there are very much ingredients there worth seeking out in their own right.

As for Sky, it’ll be interesting to see if it can up the ante, and try and go toe to toe with services like Netflix. That’s unlikely, given that Netflix is investing some $8bn in original productions. But at the very least, Sky – which may be under new ownership soon, with a deal on the table that’d see it become part of the Disney empire – can support low- to mid-budget cinema and do some good there.

Anon is worth a look at least, although it doesn’t scream cinema release. But it’s a decent movie, in the midst of an interesting distribution strategy.