Tag: post-apocalypse

Fear of a Black Planet

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★★
“Not everything is black and white…”

It’s interesting to look at the film’s IMDb page, and contrast the reviews, where there’s nothing less than an 8/10, with the rating, where 73% of votes are a 1/10. One “review” was actually a rant about other reviews which appear to have been removed? Something odd there. There’s no doubt, the film is not so much tackling a contentious topic, as driving head-first into it at 80 mph. Even the title (obviously inspired by the Public Enemy LP of the same name) is an incendiary one, guaranteed to raise the hackles of many – and, to be honest, not without reason, because of the assumptions it makes. It’s a shame, since the film is at least slightly more nuanced than the title makes it seem.

We’re still deep in problematic territory, however. The topic of race relations in post-Trump America is not something a 70-minute film can address in any meaningful way. While I have to admire the intent, it feels like this was doomed to fail from the get-go, and delivers only the most ham-handed of commentary. Fay (White), a newly graduated black cop, is on the way to visit her father’s grave when full-on race war breaks out. She takes shelter in the warehouse belonging to artist Nova (Kott), only to find it’s not much of a safe haven. For Nova turns out to be part of a white militia group, run by Lestor (Benton). They’ve got a van and are plotting something not very nice with it.

The issue here is the script, which has so many flaws it’s hard to pick out the worst. It’s probably Fay’s repeated failure to nope the hell out of there, despite prolific opportunities. Though the competition in this category is tough. Why does Nova let a “monkey” in to their lair, on multiple occasions? Why do the militia not permanently dispose of Fay the first chance they get? Shouldn’t they – oh, I dunno – lock the door to prevent Fay’s white boyfriend, Ric (Price), from coming in? It’s not as if civilization outside has collapsed into anarchy and utter chaos. Oh, my mistake: it supposedly has. Or maybe not immediately recruit Ric onto their team? Guess you just can’t get the white supremacists these days…

None of these have anything to do with the film’s apparent message: it’s basic storytelling. The performances are fine, and the direction occasionally impressive; the ending works better than it should. However, these aspects deserve a much better plot, and aren’t enough to salvage the endeavour as a whole. With regard to the messaging, it’s not as painfully didactic as I expected from its title, tending to let its morality flow from the situations. Though any pretense at balance is limited to a two-minute appearance by a vigilante apparently affiliated to the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, going by his multiple references to “white devils”. The reality, of course, is that 90% of people, black and white, don’t hold these kinds of extremist views. Here, 90% do, making it as much a dubious fantasy as Birth of a Nation.

Dir: Detdrich McClure
Star: Jay White, Amanda Kott, Joshua Benton, Keli Price

Reign of Chaos

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★
“Future schlock.”

There are spells where I find myself going through a stream of mediocre movies, wondering when I’ll see something genuinely good. Then, I stumble into the likes of this, which leaves me yearning for the heady delights of mediocrity. It was in trouble right from the start, with five minutes of opening voice-over that did nothing but leave me confused. Then again, if your story requires five minutes of opening voice-over in the first place, you should probably rethink your storytelling techniques. The same could be said for a post-apocalyptic scenario in which food is in short supply, yet black pleather cat-suits are apparently easily available, in a range of sizes to fit all needs.

A plague has swept the land, turning the bulk of the population into flesh-eating “Joiners”. That is not the worst of it. For it turns out, Chaos is harvesting souls to usher in an unending period of unimaginable torment. Perhaps one where pleather cat-suits might be slightly difficult to come by. Humanity’s sole hope is the three descendants of the Greek goddess Nike: Nicole (Finch), Lindsay (Wood), and Alina (Di Tuccio). They are brought together under the tutelage of Rhodri (Cosgrove), trained in the arts of battle and sent off to face Chaos in their pleather cat-suits. He turns out to be a pasty-faced baldie, like Voldemort with a nose, though the final battle is so underwhelming you may wonder if the final reel went missing.

Let me be clear: there is hardly an element of this which reaches even the level of semi-competent. The most obvious flaw is a world, supposedly collapsed into anarchy and… dare I say it, Chaos, which looks utterly indistinguishable from our current one. Lawns are well-maintained, there is not a broken window is to be seen, and the neighbourhood even has a well-stocked boxing gym open. It’s truly the least convincing apocalypse ever. Into this fit our trio of heroines, who are, similarly, the least convincing saviours of the world ever. Their combat skills are negligible, and I have to assume they were cast solely for their ability to wear a pleather cat-suit (something I allow they do better than I could). Admittedly, their performances are not exactly helped by having to deliver laughable lines, such as, “Goddess power, bitch!”

The above is written as someone who has watched and, indeed, made his fair share of poverty-row cinema. The number one rule of this is: just because you can write it on the page, does not mean you can film it. You need to be permanently aware of the limitations which your lack of resources impose, and operate within them. The makers here seem to have no such idea, writing their way into a corner which a hundred times their budget would have struggled to escape. Ambition is laudable. This instead plays like a child in a cardboard box making “Vroom! Vroom!” sounds, and does not a Ferrari make.

Dir: Rebecca Matthews
Star: Rebecca Finch, Rita Di Tuccio, Georgia Wood, Peter Cosgrove

After the Pandemic

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★★½
“As generic as its title.”

A disease sweeps the planet, killing billions. The only ones with any hope of surviving in the outside world are the young, a small number of whom appear to have a natural immunity. Five years on, and Ellie is one of the few to have endured, scraping for a life among the leftovers of civilization. But she and the other survivors are the targets for the Stalkers: roaming groups of biohazard-suit clad hunters in white vans. They seek to capture the immune, for use in a project to develop a vaccine that can allow the elite to come out of their safe havens. While trying to avoid them, she encounters Quinn (Smith), another survivor with a wealth of knowledge, and a hard-edged approach to life. Initially, Quinn wants nothing to do with Ellie, though eventually realizes two heads can sometimes be better than one, in the never ending struggle to stay alive and free.

After the opening narrative, there’s a spell of over 20 minutes which are entirely dialogue free. It’s a brave choice, yet doesn’t hurt the movie, instead reinforcing the loneliness of the situation in which Ellie finds herself. I do have questions about so much time supposedly having passed. There are some suspiciously well-preserved corpses, and the world itself seems barely different from now, save for the shortage of people, without signs of decay. I was expecting more to be made of the youth element too, perhaps along the lines of Roger Corman’s cult flick, Gas-s-s-s, with a replacement culture having arisen to replace the geriatric one. Never happens: save for the age of the main characters, it’s irrelevant. 

The biggest issue, I felt, was there just was not enough going on here to justify the movie’s existence. After Ellie meets Quinn, the next hour largely appears to consist of them avoiding or running from the Stalkers. The pair of heroines are in severe need of some kind of goal, an end-game to which they are working, rather than, as it appears, merely basic survival on a day-to-day basis. The script seems to concentrate on the relationship between them, yet never puts in the necessary work beyond the superficial level. Why are the girls so different, given their similar experiences? 

While the performances are decent enough, the same goes for them: they get the job done, and no more. The occasional brief flashback proves almost aggravating rather than enlightening in this regard. Things do escalate down the stretch, with matters between Ellie, Quinn and the Stalkers coming to a head. Though if I was in charge of the last-named, I would have a quiet word about their collection protocols. Sloppy, and they pay the price. It is not quite enough to save the scenario. While you can’t point at much here that writer-director Lowry specifically does wrong, nor does he bring anything novel to the post-apocalyptic party, and neither is this done well enough to stand out from the crowd. Forgettably competent. 

Dir: Richard Lowry
Star: Eve James, Kannon Smith

Feral Recruit, by Ginger Booth

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

While this does take a bit of time to get going, it’s worth persisting with. For there’s some particularly impressive world building here, and characters who are not your typical young adult fare. This takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, after an Ebola outbreak has devastated the United States, causing it to disintegrate into a collection of “superstates”, combining various old states into larger, autonomous territories. New York was, to borrow a (profane but accurate here) line from Snatch, “Proper fucked.” After the disease broke out, the city was sealed off and the epidemic left to burn itself out. The population was decimated, both by Ebola, and the lack of food which followed, known as “The Starve”. Only now, years later, has the city been re-opened and the survivors are beginning to rebuild.

The heroine here is Ava Panic – originally pronounced “Pah-nich”, but no-one bothers now. She survived as a gang rat in the White Rule group, rising to become “Queen Bee”, alongside its leader, Frosty. Eventually growing disenchanted, she left for a more official life and work, running one of the crews involved in rebuilding Manhattan. But an opportunity arises with the army looking to recruit new soldiers for the security forces. While they’re prepared to overlook Panic’s questionable past, how can a tiny girl, no matter how fierce and capable, cope with the ferocious physical demands of basic training? Never mind the discipline required by the military, a sharp contrast to her lawless gang rat life.

At times, it does feel like I was thrown in the deep end; there is a whole series of prequels available, which might have addressed this. A Book 1 needs to be able to stand on its own, and this was on slightly shaky ground there early on. But the depth of the world gradually made sense, and I appreciated the gutsy way in which Booth made her heroine imperfect. Indeed, making her a white power supporter – even a former one – is kinda risky, in terms of evoking heroine empathy. Admittedly, she joined White Rule after a particularly shocking incident, and Booth manages to make both Ava and Frosty more than the obvious Aryan stereotypes.

There has clearly been a lot of thought put into the detail of how society might be rebuilt after a world-shattering event like this – and another follows in the second half, when a tsunami triggered by the collapse of the melting ice-caps, sweeps the East coast of America. Perhaps it gets bogged down a little too much in those minutiae on occasion, though it’s never long before Ava’s progress forward continues. Interestingly, it doesn’t end quite the way I expected from the synopsis, but it’s always good when some problems are too much for a heroine to overcome; it makes them more human. This first installment finishes with Ava’s life heading in a different direction, and it’s one I’d be curious to follow her into.

Author: Ginger Booth
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 4 in the Calm Act Feral America series.

Nemesis 5: The New Model

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★½
“Left longing for the subtlety of Albert Pyun.”

It has been twenty years since Nemesis 4 apparently signalled the end of Pyun’s cyborg saga. I was therefore rather surprised when a fifth installment cropped up on my radar. Not directed by Pyun, admittedly, but he had given his blessing to it continuing under the guidance of Ferguson. It’s one of those things which probably seemed a good idea at the time, and there are elements that occasionally teeter on the edge of working. However, there’s far from enough content here, and the execution turns into into a fan film for the Nebraskan rivet-head community, with the severely limited appeal that implies. 

In the future, the Red Army Hammerheads are waging a war against the Los Angeles Police Department and their allies. Among the latter is Ari Frost (Craig), a part-human, part cyborg, who was trained in the ways of a warrior by Alex Sinclair (Price). That’s one of those nice elements, having the star of Part 4 show up to pass the torch on; seeing her was a bit like seeing Linda Hamilton pop up in the trailers for the new Terminator movie. Ari and her pals are being hunted by various elements of the R.A.H., dispatched by their leader (Novak), before she can stop them by… Well, you’ll have to watch it to find out. Which is code for “I completely lost interest and stopped paying attention.”

The director seems to think that slapping a random filter on the lens equates to art, and the complete lack of consistency between consecutive shots is enough to give you a migraine. The special effects are mostly bargain basement post work, though the Terminator-like android was decent enough, at least in comparison to most of the rest. The fight sequences leave a great deal to be desired, and the entire film grinds to a halt in the middle, for what amounts to a 20-minute promo film for local venue, the Zero Bar, including the least sexy go-go dancing in cinematic history. That’s a lot, considering the whole thing runs barely an hour between the lengthy opening text crawl of set-up, and equally extended closing credits. And apparently, after the apocalypse, the world will look like downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. Who knew?

Positives are hard to find here. The electronic soundtrack works quite well, including a surprising theme by Velvet Acid Christ, of whom I was well aware previously. Craig isn’t bad either, though when she’s acting alongside her predecessor, you realize that she’s desperately in need of the  sheer physical presence Price brings. Though again, apparently when people get cybernetic implants, they turn into refugees from Hot Topic. Even by the limited standards of what was already a bargain-bin science fiction franchise, this is scraping the bottom of the barrel. To be honest, it would probably have been better for all concerned if they’d left the franchise on the strange yet relatively high note which was the fourth installment.

Dir: Dustin Ferguson
Star: Schuylar Craig, Crystal Milani, Mel Novak, Sue Price

E.M.P. 333 Days

  By

★★★
“A thoroughly Canadian apocalypse”

Really, for a reported budget of about $6,500 – and those are Canadian dollars, which currently works out to less than five grand in freedom dollars – this is quite impressive. You could argue that trying to create a convincing post-apocalyptic scenario on such a tiny budget is biting off more than you can chew. And there are certainly moments which just don’t work. But in its low-key approach, it’s probably a more accurate reflection than many of the way in which the world might end. Not with a bang, but with a whimper, and a slow grinding to a halt.

In this case, it’s an electromagnetic pulse weapon, detonated high in the atmosphere (most likely by North Korea, going off early radio broadcasts) and wiping out everything that use electronics. Which, these days, is virtually everything. When it does, young heroine Niamh (Ferreri, the director’s daughter) is staying with her grandmother, because Dad is away on a business trip. Initially, they hole up, trying to wait it out, but eventually resources dwindle and Niamh has to strike out on her own. Fortunately, Dad was a bit of a prepper and so she is better prepared than most girls her age for life in the new, primitive world, as well as encountering other survivors, both good and bad.

Undeniably, you have to allow a lot of leeway for the very limited resources. Even given the rural setting, it’s never clear to where 99% of the population has gone, or why; a throwaway line saying, “A bunch of people left a few nights ago,” is about as close as we get. The collapse of civilization into anarchy and chaos is depicted by a shot of Niamh and her grandmother, peering out the window and looking concerned, while somewhat riotous sound-effects are heard. All told, as the tagline above implies, it’s a very polite end of the world. It’s also a bit unusual, and therefore refreshing, to see a positive portrayal of survivalists. Rather than the usual wild-eyed paranoiacs, they’re depicted here as down-to-earth, and simply prepared for unfortunate events.

The technical aspects are quite impressive, especially on the visual front where it certainly doesn’t look like a microbudget production. However, the film does drag in the middle. From the point at which Niamh meets another young survivor, Will (Davidson), it seems to spin its wheels for the longest time, despite the pair stumbling across a rare car still capable of driving. It takes the injection of an external threat before the plot begins to move forward again, and Ferreri deserves credit for getting its depiction of killing right, as not something which should be done lightly by anyone.

The movie did tie up its loose ends up a little too conveniently, just when it was looking set fair to be nicely ambiguous. Though on the other hand, this offers a somewhat hopeful note on which to finish things. That might not be a bad thing after a generally downbeat experience, and if it remains the complete cinematic opposite of, say, Fury Road, that’s not entirely a bad thing.

Dir: Adriano Ferreri
Star: Rosa Ferreri, Liam Davidson, Derek A. Bell, Martin Saunders

Riot Girls

  By

★★
“Two girls, one gun.”

After a disease has wiped out all adults, the town of Potters Bluff has divided into two camps, delineated by the river running through the town. On the west are the Titans, a quasi-fascist order of jocks operating out of the old high school and led by Jeremy, whose motto is “Strength, power, respect.” On the east are the free-spirited remainder, living under and protected by Jack (Bourgeois). However, after hijacking the contents of a Titan truck, Jack is abducted by them and held hostage. A three-person party sets out on a rescue mission: Jack’s sister Nat (Iseman), her best friend  – and painfully obvious lesbian, right down to the mohawk – Scratch (Kwiatkowski), and Sony (Friese), a former Titan who recently defected to the East, and whose inside knowledge is essential to their survival and the success of the mission.

This provides a slightly different twist on the usual post-apocalyptic scenario, though the idea dates back at least to Roger Corman’s 1970 film Gas-s-s-s, in which a deadly gas wiped out everyone over the age of 25. Canadian show Between also explored similar territory, and the conflict-driven nature here brings us almost into Battle Royale territory. Though it’s more of a team sport than an individual pursuit, and natural division instead of artificial construct. But I have to wonder, how did Potters Bluff reach this point? What’s the back story which saw, for example, Jack and Jeremy become leaders of their factions and implacable enemies? I suspect this may have been more entertaining than what we actually get. And why is the soundtrack apparently fascinated with hair metal songs from a long bygone era? [I’m pretty sure it shares one with the 35-year-old Return of the Living Dead…]

After a bright, comic-book styled opening sequence to set the scene, at first it seems this may be building and then subverting expectations. For example, when on a foraging expedition, Scratch is delighted to come across a vibrator… But in a twist, her interest is purely for the batteries it contains. However, the further on it goes, the safer and more predictable everything seems to become. The hurdles Nat, Scratch and Sony have to overcome on their journey, are precisely the ones you’d expect (although there is one eye-poppingly brutal head-shot), and it all inevitably leads to a confrontation with Jeremy and his troops in their high-school gymnasium.

Most irritatingly, it ends up getting too bogged down in class and gender politics. The Titans are largely defined as the bad guys almost purely because they are white, straight and male. Meanwhile, it’s “diversity = good” for the Eastsiders – even if its tenets like affirmative action are a civilized conceit, which wouldn’t last two days in a proper apocalypse. Consequently, it’s absolutely no surprise Nat and Scratch end up as An Item – not minutes after the former has spurned a heterosexual advance, and while Nat’s brother is still in the clutches of his enemies. I guess, for some, the line between free love utopia and devastated dystopia is severely blurred.

Dir: Jovanka Vuckovic
Star: Paloma Kwiatkowski, Madison Iseman, Alexandre Bourgeois, Ajay Friese

Immortal Wars: Resurgence

  By

★★
“Let there be light!”

First, the good news. Whatever the issue was with its predecessor in the lighting department, it has been corrected. You can actually see what is going on. After spending the entire previous movie peering into murky darkness, trying to work out who was doing what and to whom, this was a blessed relied. Now, the bad news: it still falls some way short of interesting, so merits a mere half-star advance. Indeed, if anything, it’s a bit more tedious, not least because it clocks in at 112 minutes, without having anything like 112 minutes of content.

It does carry on immediately from Immortal Wars, so you might as well consider them as one single movie – watching one or the other would not provide anything close to a complete experience. Heroine Trikalypse (Gerhardy) continues her revolt against the evil Dominion Harvey (Roberts), with the help of her fellow rebel “deviants” – those who possess special powers. Apparently, this involves her escaping from Dominion’s facility… purely so she can break back into it. Not sure what that was all about. It certainly explains the expanded running time, with a lot of traipsing about, both through tunnels and across the (mercifully, well-lit!) desert, as Dominion’s henchwoman Hart (Alayne) tries to stop them.

There is no shortage of action, admittedly. It just isn’t very well-executed action, and for supposedly superpowered mutants, they seem to keep forgetting to use their superpowers much. We also discover the whole “fight to the death” thing from the first film was more true in the spirit than the actual observance, with Trikalypse’s BFF Iro not exactly as deceased as we were led to believe. Of course, as the rebels fight their way towards the inevitable confrontation between Trikalypse and Dominion, there are casualties, though it would be a stretch to say that any of them provided an emotional impact.

It’s all very predictable, such as the way that Dominion, despite his claimed aversion to deviants, has his own platoon of them. Yet, for someone who supposedly rules the entire United States, he can only apparently command a couple of dozen people. His actions also defy simple logic. If ever I become an evil overlord, and know the precise location of a group of my enemies who are coming to attack me, I will not send out a henchwoman to engage in banter and hand-to-hand combat. I’m taking off and nuking the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure…

And, again: Bill Oberst is listed second in the credits, yet barely appears. [He may not appear at all, but I did genuinely doze off for a bit in the middle, so can’t be 100% sure] At least this time, Lujan does have the good grace to provide something of a satisfactory conclusion: another area in which it does improve on the first part. Overall though, the plodding nature of the core narrative largely negates these improvements, and combined with the extended duration, you’re left with something which you need to be in a highly forgiving mood to sit through.

Dir: Joe Lujan
Star: Jackie Gerhardy, Eric Roberts, Ben Stobber, Camille Alayne 

Immortal Wars

  By

★½
“Batteries not included.”

For whatever reason – presumably misguided stylistic reasons – the great bulk of the film is buried in darkness. Seriously, three-quarters of the film feels like it’s illuminated solely by natural lighting. And given it mostly takes place underground, in rooms with no windows, this is a major problem. The movie reaches its literally darkest moment during an early scene where the camera pans over an underlit set to an even more underlit door where someone has entered to deliver a message. You cannot see who it is. You just hear a disembodied voice, before the camera pans back. It’s a horrible mis-step, whether due to poor shooting, a poor transfer, or a bit of both. It largely dooms the movie, to the point where even an energetic final third is unable to rescue proceedings. For how can you begin to enjoy something you can’t see?

The story takes place in a future world, now divided into ten sectors. A small fraction of the population, known as “deviants”, have developed superpowers, becoming the subject of fear and hatred by regular humans. For popular amusement, there’s an annual competition in which each of the ten sectors capture and nominate their top fighting deviant. They are then taken to a central location and made to battle each other to the death, in a globally-televised contest run by Dominion Harvey (Roberts), which is watched by just about everyone else. So, basically: The Hunger Games crossed with X-Men. On a very, very much smaller budget.

The main heroine is Trikalypse (Gerhardy), one of the ten combatants taking part in this year’s model. Though for the first hour, it’s more chatty, as she bonds with another of the fighters – inevitably, of course, one she ends up fighting later on. But it is refreshingly female-oriented, with both of the finalists being women, as well as the super-boss that the winner then has to take on. However, the film then ends – literally going to the end-credits – just as that fight starts. Fortunately, I didn’t watch this until after the sequel was also available, otherwise I would have been very annoyed. It’s the sort of cliff-hanger you expect from a free e-book on Amazon, not an actual feature film.

Despite the lack of originality, it’s a decent concept and I’d have forgiven this, if the fights had actually been better than mediocre. Instead, as well as the lighting problem, they’re not very well-choreographed, though do have occasional moments which are somewhat effective. I was most impressed with Cruz as bad bitch Dekay, who had the presence, the look and the apparent skills, to keep me at least somewhat interested. But this was small consolation for something which, far too often, crossed the boundary into being genuinely unwatchable. It even managed to waste the talents of Bill Oberst, who shows up for exactly one scene – though at least that’s in daylight – while Tom Sizemore also manages to cameo his way through the darkness. I’m not exactly eagerly looking forward to the sequel, but it’s there…

Dir: Joe Lujan
Star: Jackie Gerhardy, Lindsey Cruz, Eric Roberts, Taylor Kilgore

Assassinaut

  By

★★
“Over-stuffed to the point of bloat”

There are some very interesting ideas here. Unfortunately, probably too many of them. As a result, the end-product feels like a half-baked collection of semi-formed thoughts – none of which are explored to the extent they deserve. It begins with an apocalypse, apparently triggered in order to stave off an alien invasion. Fast-forward a few years, and we join Sarah (Hutchinson), one of four children who are shortly to be teleported to a space station orbiting around another planet, which is the target for future habitation, and where the President of Earth now resides. Except an alien sympathizer stages an assassination attempt, leaving the children dropped onto the planet’s surface, along with the Commanfer (Trigo), who had a role in the apocalypse seen earlier. But he ends up being taken over by a parasite which turns him psychotic and he begins hunting down the children. Who need to locate the President, who also crash-landed nearby, because…

Well, I’m still not sure about that. Or about a number of other things here. For the film seems to have the attention span of a goldfish, and ends up like an elevator pitch, hurling concept after concept at you, in the apparent hope that you’ll do the work of arranging them into something coherent and interesting. Because it appears writer-director Bolduc couldn’t be bothered. There’s no shortage of imagination here. Heck, you’ve got enough here for at least a trilogy of films, possibly more, covering territory from The Terminator to David Cronenberg’s They Came From Within. And I genuinely wanted to root for Sarah, a serious-minded and likeable girl, who is thrown in at the deep end, having not only to survive on an alien planet, but also keep the other three from bickering their way to death. While the alien planet looks suspiciously like Earth,  the effects are generally decent for the budget, save for one wobbly monster earlier on – and that’s in Sarah’s imagination, so probably deserves a pass.

But you’ll be left with far too many questions for this even to approach acceptability. Why does the terrorist set his bomb with a 15-minute delay? Why does the space station only seem to have a couple of escape pods? How can an alien fish parasite effortlessly infect and control a human host? Why does it want to hunt down the kids? What’s so important about this President? Is there any relevance to Sarah’s bed-ridden mother? How does this all tie together with the pre-apocalypse footage, where the Commander appears to play a key part in triggering Armageddon? There’s an apparently wilful failure to explain what is going on, which grew increasingly wearing on me, over even the relatively brisk 83-minute running time. In this aspect, it reminded me of another recent SF film with a teenage protagonist, Prospect. The two films’ directors should combine forces: maybe they could come up with one decent story between them.

Dir: Drew Bolduc
Star: Shannon Hutchinson, Vito Trigo, Jasmina Parent, Johnathan Newport