Tag: post-apocalypse

Ride Hard: Live Free

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★★★
“Daughter of Anarchy.”

I was a little nervous on reading the IMDb trivia section: “Three motorcycle clubs participated as extras and offered technical advice.” If this sucked and I gave it a bad review, would I get a visit from a group of annoyed bikers, offering me ‘technical advice’ with a wrench? Turns out I needn’t have worried. While low-budget by Hollywood standards, it has some interesting ideas, and the execution is competent enough to pass muster. The events here take place after the collapse of the United States, when everywhere West of the Mississippi has basically been left to fend for itself. In this part of Nevada, that means two biker gangs, the Skoners and the Gypsies are fighting for control.

A particular wrinkle: all guns were seized by the authorities shortly before things collapsed, leaving them highly rare. But while being chased by the Skoners, 12-year-old Zyra (Rhodes), stumbles across a cache of weapons and ammo in a caravan. The bikers, under leader Tank (Russo), want the guns very much. Zyra proves quite capable of using her new-found force multipliers, leading to a stand-off between the young girl and the motorcycle club. Complicating matters: the Gypsies get word of the cache from a disgruntled Skoner, and prepare to make their own move against Zyra. It’s all unexpectedly interesting, and is a bit different from your typical post-apocalyptic shenanigans. In its thoroughly unconventional heroine, I was reminded a good deal of Molly. 

The performances certainly help, and are almost all effective. Beyond Rhodes and Rivera, there’s good support from Sons of Anarchy veteran Rivera as Gauge, the area’s overlord, and Chaz as an acerbic radio host, who could win third place in a Danny Trejo lookalike contest. I also want to mention R.A. Mihailoff, Vanessa Dorrei and Juan Espinosa as members of the Skoners. They all manage to create well-rounded characters with admirable efficiency. What is a little confusing, is the whole thing appears to be told in flashback by an older version of Zyra. This never quite gels, in part because the film doesn’t bother to circle back to the “present day” at the end, and consequently leaves the audience somewhat dangling in the breeze. 

I did wonder quite how Zyra came to be wandering the Nevada desert by herself, and how she had survived to that point. A little more development would have gone a long way: it leaves scope for a prequel, along the lines of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. There’s no doubt that the “technical advice” adds authenticity, and it’s a rather more nuanced depiction of bikers than you generally get – especially in the post-apocalyptic genre. Although it doesn’t soft-pedal the violence necessary, it’s typically toward a specific goal, and as a result feels more like a case of ‘tough times create hard men’. Or, in the case of Zyra, rather tough little girls as well. I wasn’t expecting much here, and was pleasantly surprised. 

Dir: Tony Mendoza 
Star: Lainee Rhodes, Derek Russo, Emilio Rivera, Jeff Chaz

Breathe

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★★½
“Air apparent.”

I only remembered about this when looking at our preview for last year, and realizing I’d not heard anything more about it. Turns out it was released on April 26th, to what was apparently “limited theatres,” the same day it hit on-demand. I must have missed the memo. So, here we are, and it’s very much a bit of a mixed bag. The scenario is interesting, if vague. Initial tension building is well-done, but the further it went on, the more it struggled to hold my interest. It’s a post-apocalyptic scenario, with the oxygen level of the atmosphere rapidly depleted to a lethally low percentage. This wiped out almost everyone – though where all the corpses went is one of many unanswered questions.

Among the few survivors, living in an air-tight Brooklyn bunker, are mother Maya (Hudson, looking impressively svelte), father Darius (Common) and daughter Zora (Wallis). Though Darius leaves one day and doesn’t come back, leaving his wife and child to fend for themselves. A few months later there are unexpected visitors: a group led by Tess (Jovovich). She claims to have known Darius, and needs to see his oxygen creator, because the one in their bunker in Philadelphia is breaking down, and they’re about to run out of air. Maya is highly suspicious – Darius never mentioned Tess – but Zora convinces her mother to trust Tess and her group, at least somewhat. No prizes for guessing whether or not this is a mistake.

It’s likely at its best while there’s still some doubt about the answer, with a good sense of uncertainty ratcheting up the tension as noted. Just don’t think about the science – how do you make an “EMP generator” out of a flashlight and some copper wire? Though some reviews are wrong to question how guns work without free oxygen: gunpowder, etc. contain it internally. Best avoid the unsubtle social metaphors too, e.g. a black character staring at a mural which says, “We can’t breathe”, obviously a leftover from the BLM protests, or the quoting of Malcolm X. Hudson and Jovovich are the glue which holds this together, even when you can’t see the bulk of their faces due to the helmets needed to sustain life outside.

Their interactions work: far less effective is Worthington playing Lucas, post-apocalyptic trope #23, the loose cannon sidekick. Once Tess and Maya are no longer getting to share scenes, it feels as if the air goes out of the film (an especially appropriate figure of speech given the circumstances). Lucas and Zora then have to take centre-stage, and the results are unimpressive, as the film limps towards an ending too easily contrived. I did like the look of the film, with the world a filter-tinted nightmare that has gone to absolute hell, with some impressively destroyed cityscapes.  The script, on the other hand, needed considerably more work to reach acceptable, and ends up wasting good work by its two leads.

Dir: Stefon Bristol
Star: Jennifer Hudson, Quvenzhané Wallis, Milla Jovovich, Sam Worthington

Night Raiders

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★★½
“Night of the Living Deads”

This rather gloomy slice of social science-fiction seems to take place in a post-apocalyptic version of Canada, albeit a fairly low-key apocalypse. It seems to have led to a rigidly class-based system, with a sharp division between “citizens” and the rest. That leaves the indigenous population on the outside, scrabbling hard to survive and avoid having their kids “re-educated” in military-style academies. [This pointedly echoes something similar which actually took place as recently as the sixties] To avoid being separated, Niska (Tailfeathers) and her daughter Waseese (Letexier-Hart) live off the grid in the countryside. However, after Waseese suffers an accident, they have to seek medical attention back in the city, bringing them to the attention of the authorities.

This ends in Waseese being taken away, and Niska forming a rather uneasy alliance with a local group of native Canadians, who are operating in resistance to the authorities. They have their own encampment, and one of their shamen (shawomen, I guess) had a dream which appears to be a prophecy about a saviour coming from the North. Which seems to fit Niska, much to her discomfort. She reluctantly agrees to help take a group of indigenous children to a supposed “safe haven”, if the group assists her in breaking Waseese out of the academy. Though will her daughter be willing to leave after the relentless brainwashing, telling Waseese her mother abandoned her? Then there’s the imminently looming removal – or worse – of the encampment.

It’s all very earnest, glum and comes up rather short as entertainment. I’m sure the film-makers would respond that entertainment isn’t the point, but if you’re using your movie as a parable, it helps get the message across if people are engaged. We’ve seen this kind of crypto-fascist villain state too often before (most obviously in The Hunger Games), and writer-director Goulet doesn’t bring much new to the table. As bad guys, they’re fairly milquetoast. Indeed, when someone says “Cree can’t take care of their own families”, I was kinda forced to think, “You might have a point,” given Waseese was tramping round the woods and living in an abandoned school bus when we first meet her. A call to CPS hardly seems unmerited.

The best thing about this is the look of the film, which does a very good job capturing the fall of civilization as we know it. While it’s never clear exactly what happened to cause this, what’s left is largely a blasted wasteland of badly-damaged buildings, whose inhabitants are clinging on by their fingertips. However, few of the characters living in this setting are given much in the way of depth, and the plot does things like throw in a virus epidemic which goes nowhere, because it’s 2021 and every self-respecting dystopia needs one. The finale teeters over into the fatuous, with Waseese suddenly being able to mind-control a flock of flying government drones. I’ll admit, I did not see that coming.

Dir: Danis Goulet
Star: Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Brooklyn Letexier-Hart, Alex Tarrant, Amanda Plummer

The Solid-State Shuffle, by Jeffrey A. Ballard

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Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

There’s an interesting setting here, and the concept isn’t bad. However, the author is flat-out terrible at explaining things, and that derails the book badly. There were entire pages which seemed to be an written almost in another language, such was the level of technological gobbledygook spouted – and I write as someone who works in the field. Too often, it felt as though the writer was using technology as an alternative to magic: whatever needed to be done, there seemed to be some gadget, gizmo or app which the heroine or her allies could whip out to perform the necessary task. 

This takes place in a future America where the coastal areas have fallen to the rising sea levels; for example, much of what was Seattle, is now under water. Into this largely submerged city comes Isa, the leader of a trio of thieves who had to high-tail it away from the East coast for reasons that are unexplained. They’ve now set up in Seattle, and we first encounter them robbing the vault of a bank that is now under water (literally, rather than in the financial sense!). They successfully heist an SSD drive, intending to loot the cryptocurrency they believe is on it. Except, it doesn’t contain money. Worse still, it belongs to Colvin, the local boss of criminal activity. Strike three? He then hires Isa and her team to recover his stolen property and find out who’s responsible.

The suddenly sticky situation results, obviously, in the trio having to execute a lot of fancy footwork, in order to find out who set them up, and play the reverse Uno card. Unfortunately, this is where the author loses the plot (again, literally). There are real drives, fake drives and copies of drives whizzing around between the various factions, like a game of three-card monte. And just like three-card monte, once you’ve lost track, you’re probably going to lose interest. I know I did, and the story limped towards the (largely predictable) finish line thereafter, with only the characters doing much to sustain interest, and that in a split decision.

For all of the three are problematic. Isa, who’s the main protagonist and the first person perspective, is a mouthy bitch to put it mildly. It’s a personality trait which gets her into trouble and renders her mostly unlikable, since the targets of her poison tongue are not always deserving. Then there’s Winn, her lover and newest member of the gang, who is too angsty for my tastes, suffering a perpetual crisis of conscience over their activities. Finally, we have Puo, who is the technical support. I just wish the tech support people I have to work with were one-tenth as supernaturally competent, managing to get the drop on even those supposedly more skilled. At least the author ended the story without a cliffhanger. Take your positives where you can.

Author: Jeffrey A. Ballard
Publisher: New Rochester Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 5 in the Sunken City Capers series.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

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★★★★½
“The Fast and the Furiosa”

It was a good run. There was a point, not long ago, when action heroines could do no wrong. In hindsight, the golden era may have started in 2012 when the Hunger Games franchise began, along with Brave. Summers which followed brought us blockbusters such as Gravity, Maleficent and Lucy. Subsequent years covered the entire run of the Hunger Games and the end of the Resident Evil franchises (or, at least, phase 1 for them), and things probably peaked with Wonder Woman in 2017. Thereafter things began to decline, though I’d say returns remained strong through much of 2019. That’s when Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and Alita: Battle Angel each made over $400 million worldwide, finishing in the top 25 movies of the year.

The cracks began to show with Captain Marvel, odd though it is to say, given it made over a billion. But to a large extent I suspect it mostly surfed on the success of Avengers: Endgame. Thereafter, Wonder Woman: 1984 flopped just before the pandemic hit, Black Widow underperformed, and since then it’s been almost entirely a series of failures, with only the arguable Hunger Games reboot reaching even $250 million worldwide over almost three years since. Instead, we had one of the biggest bombs of all time in the The Marvels, followed up by the disastrous box-office of Madame Web. And now the prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, managed an opening weekend in North America of only $26.3 million. That’s forty-two percent below its predecessor’s opening, excluding nine years of inflation.

It’s not all action heroines’ fault (though some on social media are claiming so). This year has been dismal in general. With three midweek days left on the month at time of writing, box-office for May is down 36% on May 2023 – and even that was the lowest non-pandemic May since 2001, again without adjusting for inflation. People just aren’t going to the movies in anything like the same numbers. I can’t say I blame them, when films appear on streaming services as little as three weeks after their theatrical release. Going to the pictures is expensive, and especially with the improvements in home theatre, the overall experience can end up being worse than staying at home, between travel, over-priced concessions, idiots talking on their phones, etc. Why not wait?

The counterpoint is experiences like this, a full-on, bombastic, in your face event that made full use of everything IMAX has in its locker, and surpassed anything I could get at home. Now, your mileage may vary. Poor Chris, in particular, found it too overwhelming, triggering motion sickness which forced her to close her eyes any time things got too kinetic – which was a lot of the time. We probably will not be IMAXing again in future. But the only recent comparable experience for me was Godzilla: Minus One. Re-reading my review of Fury Road, I’m a bit surprised I only gave it four stars. I’ve seen it again since, and I’ve just upgraded it an extra half-star. Put another way, Furiosa is every bit its equal. Different, but equal.

It’s a direct prequel, ending at the point when Furiosa (Taylor-Joy) leads the wives to escape from The Citadel. It begins with a much younger Furiosa (Browne) living in the Green Place, a rare place of plenty in the post-apocalyptic hell which Australia has become, along with the rest of the world. She’s kidnapped from there by minions of Dr. Dementus (Hemsworth), leader of the Biker Horde. Her mother is killed trying to rescue her, and Furiosa becomes the little, mute pet of Dementus, until he trades her to Immortan Joe, who runs the Citadel. Over the subsequent years, she becomes a key part of operations, becoming the partner of Praetorian Jack (Burke), who trains Furiosa and falls in love with her.

Dementus, meanwhile, is working to become the wasteland’s supreme ruler by taking over the Citadel, Gastown and the Bullet Farm. In an ambush at the last-named, Jack is captured and tortured to death, while Furiosa escapes only by tearing off her own arm. She returns to the Citadel, providing key advice to Joe in the ensuing war. But she never loses sight of her final goal: to make Dementus pay for what he did to her and her mother. Given she appears in Fury Road and Dementus does not… Well, you can probably figure out how this is going to end. Though the reported final nature of her revenge is not what you might expect, and has a certain poetic resonance, given what happened previously.

It isn’t quite the same relentless stream of action as Fury Road, and at almost half an hour longer, that’s no bad thing. There’s no shortage of action, but it tends to align with the way the story is broken into chapters. So you get a series of Drama-Action-pause segments – or occasionally for variety, Action-Drama-pause. There were concerns regarding the amount of CGI in the trailer, and I will say, it’s not as almost entirely physical as Fury Road either. However, what’s used is integrated very well, with only a couple of moment wheres the action momentarily seems obviously adjusted digitally. I suspect some of the landscapes were also enhanced: they and cinematographer John Seale’s work is so stunning, I don’t care there.

My other concern was having Taylor-Joy replace Charlize Theron, who simply has more presence. That does remain an issue, though to the new actress’s credit, to a lesser degree than I feared. It’s also countered by having much more of a real antagonist here in Dementus. The first film was mostly an extended chase sequence: Furiosa was running from Immortan Joe, after helping his wives escape, and they shared very few scenes together. Here, Dementus gives us a stronger “villain,” and the film as a whole is better for it. Hemsworth brings a charismatic power to his character, to the point where you can see why his henchmen follow him, unto death. Furiosa, in contrast, is really not much of a people person.

It’s difficult to pick out any one action highlight, because they are all very, very good. I think the ambush at the Bullet Farm might me the one which sticks most in my mind for now, though this may change on (the almost certain) re-viewing at home. It’s one which offers the most interesting environment, including buildings and smoke stacks, while the others are somewhat limited by operating in a desert. I mean, it is called “the Wasteland” for a reason. However, when Miller puts Jack and Furiosa in their rig, which is being stormed by almost endless waves of raiders, you really do not need a backdrop. Indeed, you could argue that any such would be at best irrelevant, and at worst a distraction.

You would be hard-pushed to argue that the $168 million budget is not up on screen. I lost count of the times when I wondered whether what I was looking at really existed in the physical world, or was matte paintings and CGI. Part of me wants to peer behind the curtain and watch the behind the scenes videos. However, part of me would prefer to sustain the illusion, which was a factor in the sense of wonder that often washed over me during the screening. It’s the quest for that sense of awe which keeps me going to cinemas, even if most of the time, I end up leaving disappointed [I’m looking at you, Godzilla X Kong…]

I also want to praise one other aspect, which may not transfer as well to my home environment (and I admit it is limited in this area): the audio. There are not many times when I can specifically point to this in particular as significantly enhancing the experience. I’m not an audiophile, and generally put what I see considerably ahead of what I hear. But in this case, Tom Holkenborg’s score and the rest of the sound elements were a notable and impressive component. From the rumblings of the engines through to the wind whipping across the Wasteland, the sonic design really worked, and allowed me to feel like I was being brought into the world of Furiosa. Well played

The problem from a business perspective is, it seems all but certain the makers are not going to recoup their investment, making it less likely you will see investments like this going forward. Fury Road probably just about broke even, so this was always going to be a gamble, especially without your leads. And, indeed, outside of the title, entirely without the character who has powered the franchise since its first installment, all the way back to forty-five years ago. In hindsight, a reaction of “What the hell were they thinking?” is probably understandable. But I am glad less-wise heads prevailed. If this is to be the end of the Mad Max universe, it goes out on another spectacular high, and not many franchises are able to say that.

Dir: George Miller
Star: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, Alyla Browne

When the World has Ended, by Rick Wood

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Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆½

“It just seemed as if Hell opened up one day and that was that. Instant carnage, liberated monsters, death for all. They rose from somewhere beneath the ground, attacking for no clear reason and killing until God knows when.” That’s how this starts, so there’s no hanging around. Cia Rose is one of the few survivors, for whom every day survival is a perilous endeavour. She’s seventeen, and the daughter of a scientist. When the monsterpocalypse took place, the rich, influential and powerful – who, it appears, knew this was coming – headed for their shelters. Her father was allowed in, to research the invaders. Cia was not.

Four years later, she’s barely scraping by, running from the creatures or their mindless human slaves, known as Wasters. She still holds a grudge, albeit an understandable one, at being abandoned. But Cia is devoted to “Boy”, an autistic child whom she saved after his parents were torn apart by Masketes, a vicious flying species with lethal fangs and claws. The two are separated when Cia is captured by a pack of Wasters, and most of the book is concerned with her attempts to re-unite with Boy. During the process, she discovers that regular humans can be as much a threat as any monster, and finds out the truth about what happened to her father, both back in the early days of the invasion, and since then.

Wood certainly doesn’t stint on the horror, with much rending of flesh by the monsters, though I never really got much of an idea of what they looked like. For example, a Thoral has four legs and is “about the size of the average bungalow.” More than that, I’d be hard-pushed to say. Regardless, life is now nasty and brutal, not least when Cia is captured and made to become part of a repopulation program. The resulting sex scene is, perhaps intentionally, borderline creepy given the heroine’s age. Though it’s worth noting the story is set in Britain where the age of consent is 16 – not that “consent” is much of a factor here.

I think the biggest misstep is at the end, where Cia takes action which results in the immediate deaths of hundreds of people, destroying what had been a safe haven. No matter how bad your Daddy issues, and regardless of the reason, it’s hard to come to terms with the vast carnage for which she is directly responsible, willfully and very much with malice aforethought, while still empathizing with the character. Even though nobody we particularly care about is lost – only bad people, judged by Cia’s severely questionable moral code – it yanked away almost all desire to follow her progress through this post-apocalyptic landscape. It was basically a teenage temper tantrum. Having raised two teenagers, my tolerance for those is slim, especially with the lethal consequences they have here.

Author: Rick Wood
Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Cia Rose series.

Tentacles and Teeth, by Ariele Sieling

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆½

I was disappointed by the lack of tentacles. However, there were certainly no shortage of teeth in this post-apocalyptic tale, which takes place decades after the arrival of monsters, from an uncertain source, has led to the collapse of civilization on Earth. The survivors are left to scratch out a fragile existence, trying to dodge the many kinds of lethal new fauna which inhabit the landscape. Askari is a young woman who forms part of one such nomadic group, but finds herself increasingly questioning the strict rules by which they operate. As punishment for breaking these laws, is sent by elders of her tribe on a hazardous mission into a long-abandoned urban area.

Fortunately, she’s not alone, with allies human and animal. Even with these on her side, there are any number of lethal hazards to be faced, fought or avoided. There are also lessons to be learned, both about survival and her own heritage. When she re-unites with her group, they find themselves trapped in a cave network, possessing an unpleasant sitting tenant. Once that is disposed of, the only way out is through a pitched battle against multiple packs of rarohan, carnivorous creatures the size of horses, capable of ripping a full-grown man to shreds in seconds. Survival is possible, but what might the cost be, and are they willing to pay it?

Despite any deficiencies on the tenticular department, I liked the world-building here, which is likely the strongest element. There’s just enough information given about things became this way, that it doesn’t seem a fait accompli, and it feels like the author has a whole bestiary of weird and wonderful creations in her locker, ready to drop on Askari, as and when necessary. Getting rid of them, on the other hand, is a little less convincing, and is where Sieling struggles most. It’s a combination of questionable evolution – turns out the rarohan have a button on their backs which basically makes them explode – and too convenient contrivance, such as the fully-functioning gun one character suddenly pulls out of thin air. This weakens Askari significantly as a lead character.

It’s something of a shame, since she has many admirable attributes, being smart, inquisitive and in particular, having a questioning nature. She doesn’t accept that “the science is settled,” for example, in the blanket labelling of all monsters as bad. While this can certainly put her in needless peril, the knowledge gained seems likely to help both her and her group in the longer term. Sieling does a good job of telling a complete story here: while the ending clearly opens the door towards further adventures for Askari, it’s not a cliff-hanger, and should leave you feeling satisfied. I might not be willing to pay full price for further entries in the series, yet if I was to see a special offer or collection of them, I could be tempted into a purchase. Let’s just hope the tentacles show up…

Author: Ariele Sieling
Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 7 in the Land of Szornyek series.

Xanadu Hellfire

  By

★★½
“Olivia Newton-John not included.”

I went into this braced for it to be terrible, having sat through the same film-makers’, largely irredeemable Bloodsucka Jones vs. The Creeping Death. Fortunately, this is considerably better. Still very cheap and flawed, yet is at least aware of its own limitations, and tries to work inside them (albeit with mixed success). It’s about eight-year-old Ruby (Surrec), who lives with her single parent Dad, Steven (Thomas), and is obsessed with comic-book heroine, Xanadu Hellfire (Minear). For her birthday, Ruby wants to stage a ritual from the comic, and bring Xanadu back from her post-apocalyptic future. Dad humours her – at least until the ritual works, and Xanadu arrives, with wicked stepsister Raven (America) on her heels.

From here, things progress more or less as you expect. Xanadu has to adapt to life in contemporary society (I did laugh at her going to Ruby’s school, where the battle-bikini clad warrior princess is described as “an exchange student from Canada”). She bonds with Ruby, partly because she reminds the moppet of her absent mother. Conveniently, Xanadu and Mom take the same size in clothes, as we find out during a dress-up montage. Raven shows up, and “wreak havoc” as she and her sidekicks search for Xanadu. Xanadu, Ruby, Dad, some of Dad’s loser friends from high-school team and Ruby’s best friend, Becky, team up to take on Raven and Co.

It’s a super mixed bag of elements that are fun, and stuff which borders on the cringe. Sometimes, both are in close proximity. For example, Minear looks really good twirling her staff. But as soon as she goes into hand-to-hand combat, she slows down to about one-tenth of the speed. While I admire the avoidance of hyper-kinetic editing, the lengthy shots only exacerbate this problem. The comedy which doesn’t hit, misses by a mile, such as an extended joke about characters walking about in slow-motion. It doesn’t help that Ruby’s lines never sound like something an adorable eight-year-old would say e.g. “Eat shit, Frankenhooker!”. Yet some elements are genuinely funny, such as the way Raven’s minions team up with the local Goth girl. This leads to the exchange, “I thought you were dead?” “Only on the inside…”

It’s at its best when obviously not taking itself seriously. For instance, Becky going up to a minion before the final battle, and saying, “I like your make-up. Do you need a hug?” Sadly what follows is far from the climactic conflict the movie needs, and at 107 minutes long, this is in serious need of significant trimming. There was also surprisingly little difference between the post-apocalyptic world and the modern one, though this might have been a deliberate joke. Or it might not. The ending teases a sequel, which I’m all in favour of, providing it stops the makers from doing another Bloodsucka Jones movie. For I would be at least cautiously interested in seeing Xanadu’s further adventures, as despite the flaws here, there is genuine heart at its heart.

Dir: Justin Armao
Star: Macy Minear, Aria Surrec, Ryon Thomas, Arianna America

Vesper

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★★★½
“Battle Angel Nausicaa”

As the above suggests, I was getting a strong manga influence, in particular from the works of Hayao Miyazaki: it feels like the script could have been something he’d have written on a gloomy Wednesday in January. Feisty teenage heroine? Check? Ecological message? Check. For this takes place after some kind of change in the world, which has left the bulk of the population clinging on to existence by their grubby fingernails, in a world now owned by bizarre flora. Vesper (Chapman) is one such, tending to her paralyzed father (Brake) whose consciousness has been transferred into a drone. She trades with her uncle, Jonas (Marsan), swapping blood for the seeds they need to survive.

Yet there’s also elements of Battle Angel Alita, with a sharp delineation between the haves and the have-nots. The latter live privileged lives in Citadels, served by artificial lifeforms called “jugs”, and as suppliers of the seeds, hold everyone else in their control. One day, a Citadel craft crashes near Vesper’s home, and she rescues Camelia (McEwen) from the wreckage. She promises to take Vesper and her father back to her home. Yet it eventually becomes clear that Camelia is not being 100% honest about her own situation either. On the other hand, she is potentially the key to liberating everyone from under the thumb of the Citadels, and ending their monopoly on the resources necessary for survival. It’s not something the rulers will give up easily, however.

This is rather ponderous in its progress, running close to two hours, and is clearly content to take its time getting to any of its points. If you’re willing to accept that, there’s a lot to appreciate here, not least some great visual style and world-building. This has to be one of the most fully convincing post-apocalyptic landscapes I’ve seen, a remarkable achievement considering its budget was a mere five million Euros. Vesper is a heroine right out of the Nausicaa playbook: someone who is smart and brave, rather than physically strong, devoted to her family, and who has an inherent affinity for the natural world. Her mother left the family, under circumstances best described as murky, and Camelia is a surrogate, to some extent.

It does feel as if the makers fell in love with their creation a little more than I did, and wanted to wallow in the imagination, at the expense of developing the plot. No-one seems in a particular hurry here, and for every scene which moves the story forward, there’s another that seems to exist purely as a visual showcase. I think it might work better at 90 minutes than 120 – or alternatively, expanded beyond the confines of a feature film. This is the kind of thing I could certainly imagine HBO developing into a series. The ending came close to toppling into “Eh?” territory, before a final shot where it made sense, and wrapped things up on easily the most optimistic note we’d heard. Miyazaki would likely approve.

Dir: Kristina Buozyte, Bruno Samper
Star: Raffiella Chapman, Rosy McEwen, Eddie Marsan, Richard Brake

Scavenger

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★½
“Not even worth it as scrap.”

This should be right up my alley. For it’s a grungy, post-apocalyptic story of revenge, which is heavy both on the carnage and the nudity. Throw in disapproving reviews containing lines like, “Downright nasty movie that takes all the worst bits of exploitation cinema and proudly puts it on display,” or “Scavenger is truly appalling,” and you’ll understand why it was fast-tracked for viewing. However, the weird thing is… those reviews aren’t wrong – it is a bad movie, just not for the reasons they espouse. The bigger problem is simply poor execution, in a way that manages to take the sex ‘n’ violence, and make it all painfully dull. Of all the cinematic sins, that’s one I find hard to forgive.

It takes place some years after a non-specific apocalypse, which has left cannibalism as the sole source of meat. Muscle cars, lingerie and cassette tapes are, apparently, still plentiful. Roaming this wilderness is Tisha (Churruarin), part bounty-hunter, part nomadic butcher. She accepts a commission from an old woman, to hunt down the scumbags who made her a whore and ruined her life – the usual. Tisha accepts, even waiving her normal fee. However, on arrival at the house of ill repute run by Luna (Lanaro), she quickly finds herself on the staff. She’s going to need to find a way out before she can complete her mission. It’s also going to get considerably more personal before all is said and done. 

I suspect the above sounds more fun than it really is. Part of this may be the dubbing, which appears to be both written and performed by people for whom English is a very distant second language at best. However, the main issue is simply far too many periods when zero of interest happens. Basically, after Tisha arrives at Luna’s, absolutely nothing of importance happens for a good half hour. Unless you consider the heroine being subjected to various indignities, up to and including being peed on, as “important”. In a film which runs only 71 minutes including credits, it’s a criminal waste of time, and the film has little or no chance to recover thereafter.

Its death nerve twitches feebly down the stretch, with some enthusiastic gore, Tisha wielding a bizarre weapon like a giant mixer to disembowel people. Yet it could do no more than provoke a slightly raised eyebrow. There are a couple of elements I did like: the heroine is not your typical post-apocalyptic babe; Churruarin has a rough edge to her presence that works in this setting. Generally, the set design is good too, selling the scenario effectively. These both need to be in the service of a considerably better script – one apparently less dedicated to enacting the bizarre sexual domination fetishes of the film-makers, which I do not share. ‘Truly appalling”? I probably wouldn’t give it that much credit, to be frank. 

Dir: Eric Fleitas, Luciana Garraza
Star: Nayla Churruarin, Eric Fleitas, Sofia Lanaro, Jose Manuel Solis Vargas
a.k.a. Carroña