It’s ridiculous that a man who claims to be 14,000 years old can be having a midlife crisis. Yet that’s essentially what’s happening in this follow-up to The Man from Earth. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it (it’s a low-budget cult film, so that’s pretty likely), it stars David Lee Smith as a mild-mannered professor who gathers his friends and tells them a story, claiming to be older than civilisation. He doesn’t age and avoids notice by moving on every ten years.
The sequel proves almost beyond doubt that his story is true, but now he’s aging and trying to keep his story buried. The main characters are a group of intelligent and curious college kids who stumble upon their teacher’s secret (Sterling Knight, in particular, is incredible in his role, and David Lee Smith is still acing it as the wise teacher). This plot does an excellent job of getting a new viewer up to speed – every clue and breadcrumb that the characters follow is expertly crafted to lead towards an inescapable conclusion.
In some ways, this is an improvement over the original film. It certainly looks better – they were able to showcase the gorgeous California locations to full effect. There’s a lot more conflict here as well, something which the original film lacked for the most part. 98% of the dialogue feels completely natural, and the performances are top-notch. But most importantly, it feels like a completely logical development of the premise and tone of the first film.
There’s a scene in this that we need to talk about. Although that might be the wrong word – is it one scene if it lasts for more than 15 minutes? Every screenwriting class will tell you to keep your scenes short and punchy, get in as late as you can and leave quickly, all that sort of stuff. But writer/director Richard Schenkman has managed to defy this advice and craft a 17-minute two-hander that is utterly compelling from start to finish.
If we do have one grievance, it’s the credits scene with William Katt. It doesn’t really work. It’s trying to create a hook for a potential TV series, but the ‘mystery’ doesn’t really fit with anything we know about John Oldman’s character as we know it, therefore we don’t buy into it.
But one misstep doesn’t really detract from the film as a whole. The truth of the matter is, if a series came from this film, we’d be right there on day one. The important thing is that we want to watch this one again.
THE MAN FROM EARTH – HOLOCENE / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: RICHARD SCHENKMAN / SCREENPLAY: EMERSON BIXBY, RICHARD SCHENKMAN / STARRING: BRITTANY CURRAN, VANESSA WILLIAMS, MICHAEL DORN, WILLIAM KATT, STERLING KNIGHT / RELEASE DATE: TBC
