Making his feature debut, Scott Lyus’ Walking Against the Rain is a powerful, engrossing, very human drama set against within a devastated Earth filled with roaming monsters.
Blair (Sophia Eleni) and Tommy (Reece Douglas) are struggling to survive after a calamity took place. Eking out an existence by raiding deserted evacuation centres, they find each other miles apart via walkie-talkies. They make a deal to try to meet so they set off on a perilous journey, never knowing when they might come into contact with other, less friendly, people or even worse, the Forsaken (James Swanton), a mutant humanoid breed that is adapting quickly to the find their prey: humans.
Without any backstory, Lyus jumps straight into introducing us to his protagonists. Blair seems to be the more resourceful of the two, almost to the point that it’s not clear how Tommy has survived this far into the post-apocalyptic world we’re in. The conceit of connecting them with walkie-talkies (the batteries of which will die at any time) is an interesting one, although we don’t know how they both have them, being so far apart! Almost as terrifying as the Xenomorph-like creatures that can (and do) turn up at any time are the other surviving humans. They are either religious zealots or homicidal chancers, willing to kill for the slim chance of some food. There’s still hope, however, with the ever-watchable Johnny Vivash’s James, a widower who helps one of the characters when they get into a deadly position. We’d like to think there would be people like that come the end of days.
Neal Parson’s cinematography makes the most of the desolate northern scenery, and there are some really effective locations. Sophia Eleni and Reece Douglas are superb as the leads; utterly believable and able to project the right amount of grief at the situation they are in. Every human character has suffered loss, and it’s this emotion that powers the story more than fear, although there’s plenty of that with some well-handled shocks. Walking Against the Rain is a confident debut that deserves to be seen.
