Worldwide flu pandemic. Survivor holes up in family home in bleak, wintry, isolated location. Other survivors try to get in. Tussle and tension and a bit of violence. Who will survive? This is pretty much all you need to know – and all that’s on offer – in this brisk, competent but thoroughly unremarkable cheap-as-frozen-chips post-apoc thriller – originally titled Mountain Fever – by Frankfurt-born director/writer Hendrik Faller who, according to the film’s credits, appears to have copyrighted his own name. Funny old world…
Faller admits he’s influenced by the work of James Cameron (not really seeing it here) and his film broadly occupies the same landscape as the likes of The Walking Dead (but without the walkers) and, in all honesty, any cinematic tale of Armageddon-survival that you may care to reference. It’s an intimate tale with a small cast and as such it doesn’t concern itself with the how, whys and wherefores of the virus which has decimated Mankind. The low budget means we don’t get to see any of the chaos of the end of the world which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, following the ‘less is more’ maxim and some perfunctory dialogue tells us all we need to know about the state of the world according to Fever. Jack (Miller) is an unlikely survivor, a young Brit wholly unequipped to live without the comforts of a world that has apparently fallen apart. He takes refuge in his family’s Alpine home – a few effective scenes of atmospherically eerie location filming – and tries to sit out the end of the world. His uneasy solitude is disrupted when the lively Kara (Korzun) breaks into his refuge and starts to commandeer his food supplies. Jack’s clumsy plan to get her out of the house falls apart when other much more brutal local survivors lay siege to the house and Jack and Kara, not exactly the best of friends, find themselves trapped and forced to work together in order to survive this new and deadly threat.
Broadly speaking, this is all potentially interesting stuff and yet it never really takes flight, it never finds any pace or momentum. Characterisation is sketchy, action scenes are a little clumsy and by the time our ‘heroes’ are besieged, the drama (such as it is) having already largely shifted indoors, the film has more or less ground to a halt. The final act cranks up the tension again but it’s hard to shake off the feeling that Fever has no more tricks up its sleeve as it slowly grinds its way towards a commendably downbeat conclusion which lacks the necessary emotional punch because the drama has been sluggish and the core characters fundamentally a little generic. Fans of apocalyptic and survivalist cinema are likely to find Fever a little humdrum and unambitious but Faller has at least brought his story to the screen with some style which suggests he might be capable of creating something more effective and memorable given a bigger budget and a slightly broader narrative canvas upon which to paint his pictures.
FEVER / CERT:15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: HENDRIK FALLER / STARRING: TOM MILLER, ANYA KORZUN, JULIEN MICHAEL / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
