Battleship, But More Boring

It's the end of the world as we know it, and this movie feels...blah.

Quick Plot: The year is 2063, and it's not a great one. Most of our planet has drowned, leaving just two unnamed continents above water, and both, therefore, at eternal war. 

On one side, four fairly apathetic paid soldiers are stationed on a base in the middle of the ocean (well, or anywhere, considering most of the world now looks like this). Relief is three months late, and hotheaded Baines and restless Sullivan are eager to jump ship at any chance they get...which makes the appearance of an abandoned enemy ship pretty kismet. 

Cassidy (played with suitable stoicism by Kate Bosworth), finds herself in the middle. She has a casual/maybe deeper romance with Sullivan, but also seems to carry some loyalty to the cause and their superior officer, Sgt. Hendrichs, a man who is fully dedicated to protecting their station. Considering it houses some kind of mystery doomsday device that could completely destroy what's left of the world, that's probably a good thing. 

Last Sentinel is, to put it mildly, a very slow film. A nice way of saying this is to call it patient. A more straightforward adjective would be boring. 

Somewhere in between (but tipped a little to the right), I stand with sad bangs.

Not every apocalyptic drama needs to be exciting or action-packed. There are some great ones that zoom in on a single human element or intellectual challenge. You can tell an end of the world story without a single special effect. The genre doesn't require sparks.

But it should have some form of...life.

Written by Malachi Smyth and directed by Tanel Toom, Last Sentinel is a serviceable film. It's shot well, acted quite competently, and has a production design that seems to be making a lot with a little. There's (eventually) a clear sentiment towards the film's end about its message. 

But by golly, it's very slow.

At a full two hours, Last Sentinel is not what you would call an "urgent" film. It ultimately does have some things to say, but it's quite a slog to there. Still, completists of apocalyptian cinema will likely find some satisfaction.

High Points

To my surprise, the actual "four soldiers of varying levels of commitment" interpersonal relationships worked fine, and the dynamics of having one female second in command while in a sexual relationship with the lowest ranked felt absolutely natural. 

Low Points

That being said, there's a good rule in storytelling that I'll sum up in full butchered form: the more specifically your characters are drawn, the easier it is for your audience to connect with them. Last Sentinel goes in such an opposite direction of giving its decent actors zero details as to who their soldiers are, making them such blank slates that BOY is it hard to care

Lessons Learned

I'm not a soldier, but I have to believe it's a standing rule that when investigating potential enemy turf, you do what you can to stay in contact with your team

Engineering skills trump sanity any day

Nothing multiplied by ten still adds up to nothing

Rent/Bury/Buy

Apocalyptic completists (like me) should probably put Last Sentinel towards the low middle of their to-watch list. It's FINE, but also very, very dull. Find it on Amazon Prime.  Amazon Prime if that has any appeal. 

We've Got a Long Way to Go

I'll never pass over a nuclear apocalypse story, even if it carries a whopping 2.8 out of 10 rating on IMDB...or maybe ESPECIALLY if it carries a 2.8 out of 10. This is me we're talking about.

Quick Plot: Nuclear bombs have dropped throughout the world, with an immediate death count over 3 billion. Retired military captain John Ramsay has figured out how to survive the incoming radiation with a safe home and enough supplies for three people: himself, daughter Joanna, and son-in-law-that-wasn't-to-be Larry. Instead, he begrudgingly opens his doors to five strangers: solid Steve and his radiation-covered brother Granger, jerky Las Vegas stud Mickey  and his danger galpal Jada, and older alcoholic Tim.

John is the kind of guy who spent ten years preparing his house for this exact kind of disaster AND making a scaled diorama of it to show off to eventual guests. He and Joanna quickly take a shine to the stable and smart Steve, but Granger turns everyone off. He not only survives but thrives with his radiation sickness, though side effects include a taste for raw meat.

Other rumblings begin: Mickey gets hot for Joanna, which riles Jada, who relaxes with Tim's moonshine, which offends the straight-laced John, and so on. It's not The Divide levels of conflict, but it stirs enough to put the whole group in danger.

At barely 80 minutes, In the Year 2889 is rather abrupt, both in its ending and general flow. Oddly enough, it's far more defined on some of its characterization. John makes for the kind of believably conservative military veteran who would immediately assign the young man he's never met the second in command role over his own intelligent daughter because, you know, the patriarchy. Joanna has a conscience, Mickey is a slimy villain whose motivations are clear and gross, and Jada lends some spark while being terribly judged by those around her.

That's not really to say this is good stuff. In the Year 2889 was a made-for-television movie and unofficial (though near verbatim) remake of Roger Corman's Day the World Ended. Directed by Larry Buchanan, it's incredibly stiff and visually lazy. Our end-of-the-world landscape is simply the green woods outside John's secluded house, while the mutated villains (take that with a wildly thick grain of salt considering the attitudes of our heroes) wear makeup that amounts to a few stray pieces of gunk glued to their faces. There's just not much here.

High Points
This is one of those films that feels so lacking in ambition that it's hard to summon much enthusiasm for any real aspect of it, so I guess I'll pause to think about how much more fun this all would have been if lumpy drunk Tim and sassy dancing Jada were the last two people on the planet

Low Points

I don't need every nuclear disaster story to end like Threads, but by golly, the sunny nice day sudden resolution defies not only how radiation works, but how any kind of storytelling stakes should go

Lessons Learned
Cowards only fight on their own terms and conditions

The first taste of moonshine is never good, but keep going and the chest hair will grow

Radiation poisoning will hinder your balance, though more at fault is likely the rubber mask that comes with radiation poisoning

Rent/Bury/Buy

I don't think anyone will really get much out of In the Year 2889. The story has been told in far more interesting ways and with much more vibrant style in countless iterations. Still, if you're a completist like me, it's a quick watch on Amazon Prime. 

All WASPs Go to Heaven

 

One of the more interesting, unintentional trends of recent genre films popping up on streaming services has been how shockingly keen even the mediocre ones have been at anticipating parts of the COVID-19 zeitgeist. While much of it is coincidence with a movie just landing in a new context than it was made, it does help elevate some storytelling into something more current.

The Beach House certainly felt that way, and now I'd add After Darkness, a film dated as a 2019 release, though based on now more grown actress Natalia Dyer, I'd wager it was filmed even earlier. The story of a family confined to one house, waiting for an end to their isolation...yes, I think we can all identify.

Quick Plot: Much like Danny Boyle's Sunshine, After Darkness can be introduced with four simple words: our sun is dying. Dark spots have led scientists to declare the end of the world, though many hold out hope that deep underground caves, reserved for the rich and powerful, may provide a safety net for a select few.

The Beatys just might qualify. Patriarch Raymond (Tim Daly) is a stern, rags to riches power player convinced that his past electoral deeds has earned his family a spot. His plan is to wait out a call from his senator pal in his sprawling country estate, complete with a well-stocked food cellar and decades worth of WASPy family tension.

Wife Georgina (Kyra Sedgwick) is heavily medicated and always one missed dose away from breaking down, possibly due to the trauma of her teenage daughter's earlier suicide. Prodigal son Ray has returned with a whole lot of anger for his dad but dedication to youngest sibling Clara, a sweetly naive 15-year-old. Middle brother and grad student Fred surprises his folks by bringing his very pregnant girlfriend Margot, something Raymond is less than cheerful about.

Stuck in sprawling but stifling estate, family tensions heat up as the world begins to freeze. And that's basically it! Based on a poem by Lord Byron (of which some lines are used throughout to frame the acts), After Darkness feels like a stage play, and could easily work in that format. Fernando Diez Barroso's script doesn't linger on the science of the world's demise, and director Batan Silva is clearly here to tell the story of this family, and not the world. As a strategy for a fairly low budget apocalypse, it's pretty sharp.

On the other hand, After Darkness does suffer from a different problem: a poor little rich family is hardly the most compelling subject matter. Loaded with good actors, it's not impossible to care about how the Beatys handle the end of the world, but it takes a fair amount of effort. Daly's Raymond is a pretty one-note jerk, while the rest of the characters are so passive that it's hard to muster much sympathy. 

Imagine being invited to a not-too-close friend's house for dinner. The salad course is perfectly acceptable, but by the time the main course rolls around, half of the table is screaming at each other, while the quiet half are nervously shifting their food with their forks before eventually fleeing to the privacy of their own rooms. And you're just there, watching it all, thinking, "so I guess this is my next 90 minutes?"

That's After Darkness. Accept the invitation at your own discretion. 

High Points

I really do have to hand it to Silva and Barroso for being extremely clever in how they used just a few brief expository news reports in the film's opening to fully create an end of the world that we never question

Low Points

As I said, watching a wealthy white family argue about past sins is pretty far down my list of things to do during quarantine

Lessons Learned
When designing your emergency food stash, always consider all possible points of entry

Checkhov's law of poisoned berries will never fail, even if the lack of sunshine may have disrupted said poisoned berries growth cycle

Before committing to spending the rest of your life with your in-laws, it's probably best to have actually these said in-laws

Rent/Bury/Buy

Look, I appreciate After Darkness's rather Beckettian approach to the apocalypse, but even if you consider its genre to be family drama, it's just not that dynamic. Apocalypse aficionados who know what they're getting into will still find some interesting takes on the genre, so there's always that. Find it on Hulu if you have the lack of energy. 

Good Gas Masks Make Good Neighbors

A wildly divisive plague thriller?

COUNT ME IN.

Quick Plot: A lethal sickness has ravaged the country, leaving the survivors to head to to unoccupied areas and avoid contact with the infected. One family, led by Paul (Joel Edgerton) has carved out a safe enough existence in woodsy isolation, at least until one fateful night when a mysterious man named Will tries to break in.

Thankfully, Will is simply a fellow family man trying to find water for his own wife and son. With a few chickens and goats to trade, he moves his clan in for a new six-person (plus one dog). Everything is going well enough...until it's not.

Written and directed by Trey Edward Shults, It Comes At Night had one of those complicated debuts, wowing some festival goers but leaving genre fans disappointed. The best way to approach it is to forget its occasional classification in the horror section altogether.

Once you get past the idea that this isn't Carriers or the tragically underseen Dead Within, It Comes At Night can play out as intended: essentially, a play or sorts with a nightmarish sense of foreboding. Yes, there is a plague but no, we as the audience don't get to see much of it or the world it has ravaged. We don't have violent scavengers or the zombie-like infected breaking in. Instead, it's the tale of two families learning to trust and distrust each other. Quietly.

High Points

It would be easy for everyone to be miserable in a movie like It Comes At Night, but there's a great bit of brightness to be found in Kelvin Harrison Jr. as teenage Travis. The actor and character bring out a certain sense of hope and the idea that there's still something to be enjoyed in a world where everything has gone to hell

Low Points

It's hard not to watch a movie like this without imagining a more exciting version, especially when one exists that is currently streaming on Instant Watch

Lessons Learned

Chopping wood is best understood when compared to pooping

When watching any post-apocalyptic thriller, do yourself a favor: never get attached to the dog

When there's no more machinery or bustling human sounds, always remember that house walls are incredibly thin

Rent/Bury/Buy

So long as you know the type of film you're getting (i.e., a quiet, almost theatrical interpersonal family survival drama), It Comes At Night is a well put together tale. It just might not be what you want out of 100 minutes of life, particularly since it's bound to leave you feeling fairly miserable about life. But you know, miserable in a way that was inspired by quality, if that makes it any better?

March of the Plague Survivors

Film plots that I will never turn down: save the rec center through dance, prevent/survive nuclear war, and worldwide plagues.

1980's Virus has two out of three.

Somewhere in my personal heaven, a movie exists wherein breakdancing teenagers struggle to disarm Soviet missiles while coughing through a superflu.

If that's not motivation to live morally, what is?

Quick Plot: Ah, the Cold War, a time when everyone couldn't help but create messy scenarios that could inevitably go wrong and lead to the end of the world. 

Or most of it.

After an experimental virus is accidentally released, the majority of human beings are wiped out by the new malady known as "The Italian Flu." The only hope for mankind awaits in Antarctica, where the freezing temperatures provide a natural barrier to the germs. With 800 men,  8 women, and a whole lot more (unseen) penguins, the remaining survivors (mostly scientists, thought probably not the penguins; or maybe the penguins, who am I to draw conclusions?) re-order society under the wise guidance of George Kennedy.

Things are going peacefully enough until an impending earthquake is detected. Because it's the 1980s, nuclear missiles have been locked and loaded with just about every spot of land in target for one political reason or another. An American survivor realizes that the movement from the earthquakes will trigger some bombs towards the Soviet Union, which the Russian diplomat reveals will in turn blast some weaponry toward suspected U.S. stations in none other than the lonely outposts of the Arctic shores. 

Thankfully, there's one working submarine still in action, and it's captained by none other than Tourist Trap's Chuck Connors who plays a British naval officer with an accent that makes Kevin Costner's Robin Hood seem authentic. Actually, he doesn't really even TRY an accent. He just reads his script littered with Englishisms ("chaps", "you Yankees," etc.) in the same grizzly Brooklyn/Southern cadence he used as Mr. Slausen. It. Is. Weird.

Anyway, American soldier Bo Svenson(!) teams up with scientist Masao Kusakari to deactivate the bombs, now armed with a possible vaccine. Can they save the lingering bits of humanity? SHOULD they? 

Virus, also known as Day of Resurrection (spoiler alert?), was an incredibly big budgeted international production directed by Kinji Fukasaku, the visionary who would go on to helm Battle Royale and fuel Emily's imagination in every scenario. Based on a novel, its international scope feels epic in intention. Unfortunately, the pared down version streaming on Amazon Prime (with some 45 minutes cut out from the original cut) doesn't quite reach the bigness the material deserves. 

There's a good 45 minutes or so spent with characters who (SPOILER ALERT) die en masse as the virus spreads throughout the northern hemisphere. While it's exciting to see such an assortment of actors (Henry Silva! Glenn Ford! Robert Vaughn!), the constant shifting of protagonists takes a little too long to stabilize, eventually leading us to figure out by default that our real lead is a mild-mannered but secretly brave Japanese scientist. 

Perhaps because of the editing, there are also a ton of ideas that don't quite get the attention they deserve in being fleshed out. The gender politics are incredibly complicated, and while there's a small amount of effort made to show how a society of educated individuals would deal with such matters, it ultimately feels fairly shortchanged in the overall final product. 

Problems (of which there are many; did I mention this is Amazon Prime and therefore, very poorly lit?) aside, I certainly enjoyed Virus because, well, it's a movie about the end of the world involving both nuclear missiles AND a devastating plague. It's brimming with recognizable actors from all over the globe, from Sonny Chiba to Edward James Olmos to, you know, CHUCK CONNORS PLAYING AN ENGLISHMAN.

Sorry, this one just REALLY lingers.

High Points

You can't be unhappy with the sheer internationalism of the cast, which includes not just a diversity of actors, but characters from every part of the world

Low Points

Look, it's also sort of what will make me remember this movie forever so it can't be THAT bad a thing, but seriously: how DID I MENTION CHUCK CONNORS PLAYS A BRITISH CHARACTER DESPITE NOT ALTERING HIS VERY AMERICAN ACCENT AT ALL?

Lessons Learned

In the early '80s, the going rate for transporting flesh-eating bacteria was 50,000 pounds

The real secret to world peace is a stern Bo Svenson

Tying one's shoes is more difficult and time consuming than activating nuclear weapons

Rent/Bury/Buy

I can only speak to the truncated 108 minute version available on Netflix, which looks grainy and doesn't seem to flow with the full epic scale one would imagine for a film of this subject matter, budget, and director. That being said, if you, like me, love a good fashioned On the Beach-style end-of-world saga, this is certainly one loaded with a whole lot of the hallmarks of the genre. I'll be on the lookout for the extended version, which is probably (I'm guessing) the more proper way to watch.

Proper, in the truest of British forms.