Review Category: Reviews

CODE 8

NETFLIX ORIGINAL | DIRECTOR: JEFF CHAN | SCREENPLAY: JEFF CHAN, CHRIS PARE | STARRING ROBBIE AMELL, STEPHEN AMELL, SUNG KANG, ALEX MALLARI JNR | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Code 8 – a low-budget sci-fi passion project for cousins Robbie and Stephen Amell, expanded from a 2016 short film of the same name – would probably have passed largely unnoticed if not for the curious lockdown circumstances that have forced people to dig deeper into the dark corners of Netflix than they might normally have done. Consequently, the film is currently enjoying a healthy profile on the streaming service as ravenous audiences clamour for more and more original content. ‘Original’ isn’t, however, a word we’d necessarily associate with Code 8 as it takes some well-worn clichés – here it’s the idea of the trials and tribulations faced by a small percentage of the population who are born with ‘supernatural’ abilities and the fear and suspicion they arouse in a hostile society that forces them to live in poverty and squalor. Code 8 is unashamedly low-budget stuff – the film was largely crowd-funded – and yet it manages to turn its lack of cash to its advantage by delivering a few impressive money shots and spending its time developing its world and its characters.

Connor Reed (Robbie Amell) is a ‘Power’ with electro-kinetic abilities, eking out a living from manual labour jobs and trying to support his sick mother who is suffering from brain cancer. He is enlisted by telekinetic mobster Garret Kelton (Stephen Amell) who recruits him in a series of heists and robberies which will provide Connor with the money he needs to pay for his mother’s treatment as well as making up the shortfall in the profits from a drug business run by Garret’s sleazy boss. Garret tries to help Connor master his own abilities and encourages him to become more assertive in a world determined to grind him and his like into the ground. But the pair’s partnership and, particularly, Garret’s associations, lead the pair into dangerous territory and Connor is forced to make difficult decisions about his own future as his mother’s condition deteriorates and time begins to run out.

It would be easy to dismiss Code 8 as just a cheap and lazy X-Men rip-off but the film’s strength lies in its thoughtful characterisation, its well-realised vaguely-dystopian world, and a script that gives its characters room to breathe and develop as it explores its themes of a society where people aren’t just good or bad but capable of great moral ambiguity for all sorts of reasons. Lincoln City, the faceless metropolis where the action takes place, is patrolled by huge flying drone aircraft which disgorge RoboCop-like android ’Guardians’, and these sequences are where the money has been spent, resulting in a couple of impressive action scenes in which the drones sweep across the city and the Guardians indulge in combat with Garret’s gang and assorted undesirables. Elsewhere, many of the effects – electric bolts and various bangs and flashes – are very much the stuff of a modestly-funded TV series – but we’re constantly reminded that they’re really not the point of the film or the story; the point is we’re getting involved in these people and we’re genuinely invested in their world and the uncomfortable predicaments and moral dilemmas it throws up.

Code 8 isn’t perfect, of course – it’s a bit too relentlessly dour and humourless – but it does a remarkable job in bringing a believable alternative world to the screen on the sort of resources that would barely pay for the credit sequence in an X-Men movie, and yet it handles similar themes and ideas with considerably more intelligence and thoughtfulness than the last few desperate entries into the enduring Marvel mutant saga. There’s enough potential here, in fact, for what’s been described as a ‘short-form’ spin-off series for pointless short-attention-span streaming service Quibi, but we’ll believe that when we see it.

WESTWORLD – SEASON 3

REVIEWED: SEASON 3 (ALL EPISODES) | WHERE TO WATCH: SKY, NOW TV

HBO’s Westworld has become a very different beast to its source material, the schlocky ‘70s movie in which Yul Brynner’s robot cowboy went kill-crazy in a theme park. In fact, it’s also become very different to its own first season, as barely any scenes in this third run even take place in the eponymous wild west-themed attraction.

This may be a good thing; Season 2 struggled to maintain viewership, as its increasingly complex stories, not only set across different ‘worlds’ but across different time periods too, had started to feel not worth the flowcharts you needed to follow them. With that season ending on a big cliffhanger – robotic ‘host’ Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and a group of her comrades escaping from Westworld into the real world – Season 3 was pitched as something of a reboot.

From the first episode, this season’s very different tone is clear. We’re no longer looking at sun-scorched mesas, but at a glossy 2050s Los Angeles. Caleb Nichols (Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul) is a former soldier now making a living through odd, and often illegal, jobs; one such job brings him to Dolores, who recruits him for her revolution. Across eight episodes, Dolores and Caleb infiltrate the corporate world, while her allies – including Tessa Thompson as a host who’s stolen the identity of Delos executive Charlotte Hale – work on their own plans.

It’s a more straightforward narrative than the previous season, and an exciting one, with a sense of escalation as the revolution grows. There’s plenty of action: urban car chases and shootouts as stylish as Heat and The Dark Knight; a thrilling confrontation between Dolores and Thandie Newton’s Maeve, turned against her old friend; and some good old-fashioned bits in which a giant robot smashes stuff up. On a visual level, it’s as good as TV gets – gorgeously futuristic Singaporean locations, incredible cinematography and effects, and Dolores has a fabulous new hairdo.

However, as her plan expands to involve a god-like AI which can predict human action, the show falls back into old mistakes. We’re all for intelligent sci-fi, and there’s a worthwhile point being made about the dangers of big data, but Westworld’s writers have a tendency to mistake complexity for depth. Interesting points get lost among tedious philosophising, and later episodes have so many characters, subplots, and ideas that the whole thing becomes heavy going for all but the most flowchart-loving of followers. At least Aaron Paul seems consistently as confused by everything going on as we were.

On the whole, though, this slick political thriller is a refreshing change of tone and a step up in quality. The finale’s post-credits tease promises an exciting character addition for the confirmed Season 4 – there are some rewards for viewers following closely enough to still be with it!

DEVS

REVIEWED: SEASON 1 (ALL EPISODES) | WHERE TO WATCH: BBC iPLAYER

Alex Garland is best known for his work on movies such as Dredd, Ex_Machina, and Annihilation. Devs sees the director return to the realms of sci-fi with this visually stunning mini-series about the nature of reality. This is the sort of sci-fi tale where technology is used to shine a light on the human experience, though there is also a fair amount of action, subterfuge and drama along the way. Be warned that Devs goes for the visually striking imagery from the very start. This is a series that expects to be re-watched multiple times as the on-screen language is so dense that it is impossible to understand it all on the first pass. It’s also a multi-layered story with metaphor and meaning piled on at every possible stage. At points, the ‘art’ of the storytelling almost overtakes the story itself, but Garland keeps it just on the right side of entertaining throughout.

Devs is a perfect example of the golden age of television. Such a high-budget, lush, and incredibly indulgent show would not have been made a decade ago, or if it had the whole thing would have been an episode of some sort of anthology. Instead we get eight long episodes that allow the director to tell a meandering tale of man’s desire to control the uncontrollable. On the face of it, it’s a simple tale of corporate espionage and mad-science. We follow employees of Silicon Valley tech-firm Amaya, a company that has conquered the market for computer processing power. Nick Offerman plays Forest, the CEO of the firm, which he has named after his dead daughter. Forest’s big project is kept in isolation and is only know as ‘DEVS’, which employs only the best software developers you can find. Forest’s project has attracted great interest, and he’ll do anything to keep it away from those who would interfere.

This is an espionage and secrets thriller, superficially wrapped in a shell of super-tech and weirdness. It’s also a story of redemption and ascension, and one that almost ascends up itself at times. Alison Pill is perfect as the steely-eyed executive, keeping the CEO on track throughout. Sonoya Mizuno is outstanding as Lily Chan, our main protagonist and ‘person who is trying to figure out what’s going on’.

This is not a show you should binge. This is a show that you should digest in chapters and ponder appropriately. Devs is a near-perfect companion piece to Ex_Machina, being a parable about the power of reason and imagination, and how the line into madness is easily crossed. Essential, if not easy, viewing.

EMERGENCE

REVIEWED: SEASON 1 (ALL EPISODES) | WHERE TO WATCH: FOX UK, NOWTV

It’s amazing what you can do with science these days, and sometimes it’s hard to draw a line between science fiction and ‘science-fiction’. With a foot in both camps, although definitely leaning towards the latter, what with its superpowers and sentient A.I.s and whatnot, Emergence is a story about artificial humans and real humans and exactly what makes someone ‘human’ in the first place.

Fargo’s Allison Tolman is Jo Evans, a newly-divorced police chief in a small Long Island town, who is called to the scene of a plane crash on a local beach. The wreckage makes it extremely unlikely that anyone will be found alive but Jo finds a young girl hiding in the sand dunes, and rushes her to hospital. Government agents clean up the crash site and then demand Jo hands over the girl, but she sends them packing only to encounter the real government agents who have only just arrived. Deciding that something just isn’t right, Jo takes the girl home for safekeeping.

The girl – who has no memories, and who Jo names Piper – is the key to the story; what happened on the plane, how did she survive, and who are these shady figures who want to get hold of her so badly that they will lie, steal, and even kill to get her? A mystery begins to build, one that involves futuristic tech companies, investigative journalists, terrorist groups, and a reclusive genius, and if this all sounds a bit like Fringe then that’s a very good thing, indeed.

Tolman is wonderful as police chief Evans, wearing her feelings on her face, a very physical performer who brings every scene to life with her huge charisma. Playing opposite her are a cavalcade of well-known actors in some unfamiliar roles; Scrubs’ Donald Faison as Jo’s ex-husband Alex, and Highlander’s Clancy Brown as her quiet, unassuming father Ed, give a depth to Jo’s household – a place of safety and comfort for Piper – that envelops the viewer as much as the young girl.

And then there’s Terry O’Quinn, set up as the show’s big bad, Richard Kindred, a sinister Elon Musk figure with all the creepy aura of John Locke and Jerry Blake. Like Fringe, just who is the big bad is a changeable thing, with twists and turns, and questions of trust and motives, keeping the viewer hooked from one episode to the next.

Emergence has been renewed for a second season, with the final moments of season one setting up a doozy of a twist, and with the show’s core premise – which we won’t spoil here but becomes evident halfway through the thirteen episode run – allowing for characters to return, everything is up for grabs. There’s a warmth to Emergence – that starts with Allison Tolman and spins out through the rest of the show – that you rarely find in network TV shows these days and that’s worth rewarding. What’s emerging isn’t just the next phase of humanity, it’s an intelligent and wholehearted story that can’t help but evolve you with it.

STUMPTOWN

REVIEWED: SEASON 1 (ALL EPISODES) | WHERE TO WATCH: ALIBI, NOWTV

There’s no hard and fast rule about what makes a TV show STARBURST-worthy. Sure, for the most part we cover science fiction and fantasy, superheroes and horror, but there’s always been a grey area when it comes to what exactly earns a show its ‘cult’ tag. There are no robots in Starsky and Hutch, or elves in Bonanza, but few would argue that – with the distance of time – these shows are not cult TV.

So where to put a show like Stumptown, a crime drama based on a series of comic books by Greg Rucka, Matthew Southworth, and Justin Greenwood? On the surface, there’s nothing STARBURST about Stumptown, despite its star Cobie Smulders being a regular in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill, but there’s a definite feeling that, in years to come, this will be considered a cult classic. Besides, if we’re really stretching – and believe, it’s worth the stretch – there’s a car stereo which seems to have a mind of its own, always playing the right song at the right time.

Smulders stars as Dex Parios, a former US Marine who returned to Portland (the ‘Stumptown’ of the title) from Afghanistan to take care of her brother, Ansel, who has Down Syndrome. But that was twelve years ago, and Dex spends her time propping up the bar at her friend Grae’s pub, Bad Alibi, where Ansel works part-time. Dex is hired by Sue Lynn Blackbird, the owner of a casino on a Tribal reservation, to find her granddaughter – not because Dex is a private eye (at least not yet), but because she wants someone she can trust. Dex and Sue Lynn have a past; Sue Lynn’s son, Benny, was Dex’s college boyfriend, and was killed in Afghanistan when he joined the Army to be near her.

Thus kicks off eighteen episodes full of cases for Dex to crack, beers for Dex to drink, boys and girls for Dex to get involved with, and a well-rounded, likeable cast that includes fellow P.I.s, put-upon police officers, a parade of low-lives, and Adrian Martinez as taco chef extraordinaire Tookie. Martinez is the standout in a cast of great actors, including New Girl’s Jake Johnson as Grae, and Almost Human’s Michael Ealy as Detective Hoffman, Dex’s main contact at the Portland Police Bureau (and on-off love interest).

The cases Dex works are offbeat and always contain a turn or two, and a few deeper, season-long mysteries begin to emerge that throw the cast’s worlds into a state of chaos. Central to Dex Parios is her PTSD, and this is handled sensitively but without shying away from its devastating and self-destructive effects, and there’s a growth that feels real without also reeking of a lecturing, hectoring tone.

In this unruly world in which we live in, Stumptown has yet to be renewed for a second season, and who knows when conditions might improve enough to make one even if it gets the greenlight. However, this is a very special show, that will quickly become one of your favourites, and you need to jump on the Stumptown train before it leaves town.

STAR BLAZERS: SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO 2202 – PART ONE

STAR BLAZERS: SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO 2202 – PART ONE / CERT 15 / DIRECTOR: NOBUYOSHI HABARA / SCREENPLAY: HARUTOSHI FUKUI / STARRING: DAISUKE ONO, HOUKO KUWASHIMA, CHRISTOPHER WEHCAMP, MALORIE RODAK / RELEASE DATE: MAY 25TH

A 2017 remake of the second season of the 1974 anime Uchū Senkan Yamato (released in the west as Star Blazers), Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2202 should be an automatic home run. The 2014 remake of the first show, available from Manga UK as Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2199 – The Complete Series, ranks with the all-time best animated shows, and is one of the best examples of space opera to be found in any medium, and so expectations were understandably high for this sequel release. Unfortunately, it doesn’t deliver on that promise.

After the culmination of the Yamato’s first voyage, to Iscandar to find the secret to saving Earth from the Garmillas Empire, life has returned to a semblance of normality, and the Terrans and Garmillans share an easy peace after the deposition of the Garmillan dictator, Abelt Dessler. The crew of the Yamato, now dispersed across Earth, all receive a vision of a loved one asking for help, and feel an urge to return to the ship, setting sail for the distant planet, Telezart, to find the source of the distress call. With the Garmillans now working alongside the United Nations Defense Force, the series introduces the Gatlantis Empire as a brutal, barbarian threat to the security of the galaxy, who have their own methods and drives, a world away from the peaceful fascism sought by Dessler’s Garmillans. But first, the Yamato must escape Earth against the wishes of its government, who are fearful of causing interstellar incidents in this delicate time.

Much of the voice cast from the first show return for the second, in both the original Japanese and the English-language dub, and the animation is once again handled by Studio Xebec, who delivered the back half of the 2199 series. Where that series maintained a high quality, with a pleasingly retro feel and a seamless integration of CGI and traditional animation, the style is tweaked for the 2202 voyage, moving it further away from the style of the 1974 original, and the CGI is often jarring and obvious. The 2202 voyage has a different directing and writing team working on adapting the original material, and it shows, with the story lacking the flow of the earlier mission, despite keeping the same search and encounter theme.

The Manga UK Blu-ray doesn’t come with an abundance of extras, only the usual trailers, and textless opening and closing songs, along with a single episode commentary and interview with two of the English-language dub cast.

Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2202 is not a bad show, and considered on its own regards should be thought of as an above average anime. The quality of its prequel raises expectations that are sadly not delivered, and while this should not detract from 2202 as a product, it’s hard to escape a feeling that they could, and should, have done better. For anyone looking for more adventures featuring Susumu Kodai and his crew, this is worth your while, but those new to the Yamato should start with its maiden voyage.

AMAZING STORIES

REVIEWED: SEASON 1 (ALL EPISODES) | WHERE TO WATCH: APPLE TV+

The problem, in a nutshell, with this high profile reboot of the Steven Spielberg 1980s anthology series (the first five episodes of which are available now, the remaining five later in the year) is the stories really aren’t that amazing. But then a series entitled Mundane Stories isn’t likely to get punters reaching for their credit cards to subscribe to Apple’s streaming service. The original series, which ran from 1985 to 1987, never really took flight but those who remember its 45-episode run (the show was cancelled after its second season, having never made much of an impact) are more likely to recall its unfussy amiability rather than its determination to challenge its audience by taking them to the dark and dangerous corners of their imaginations. This reboot series – Spielberg is still on board as an executive producer – arrives at a time when it’s hard to turn on your TV without falling over an anthology show, and where most of them are busy dealing, often obliquely, with contemporary issues and fears or just determined to try and frighten the Bejesus out of the audience, Amazing Stories is content to just do what it always did; it’s very nice. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with a show aiming for that elusive ‘family’ audience but certainly, on the evidence of these first five episodes, Amazing Stories is going to need to try a little harder and be a little bolder if it’s going to hold its own in a TV world much busier and far more impatient than the world it inhabited in the 1980s.

There is, however, something rather charming in the show’s naivety and its cheeriness and its shameless reuse of the hoariest of old genre clichés with no intention or desire to do anything remotely new with them. In its first episode ‘The Cellar’, for example, a young builder renovating a dilapidated old house out in the country finds himself whisked back in time 100 years during a thunderstorm whereupon he embarks upon a romance with the house’s previous owner without really sparing much of a thought for exactly why and how he has travelled in time or how he is going to get back. It’s saccharine-sweet, effortlessly watchable but utterly forgettable and throwaway. ‘The Heat’ demonstrates the show’s commendably diverse credentials in an episode that is basically Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) in running shoes as a promising athlete is killed in a traffic accident but returns as a ghost, invisible to everyone and barely able to communicate with her friend, to tidy up some unfinished business. Episode three is the show’s only real clunker; ‘Dynoman and the Volt!’ promises more than it can ever deliver, prime Spielbergian schmaltz in which a grandson and grandfather bond when the old man (the final screen appearance from Robert Forster) is gifted superpowers. Just when it looks as if Amazing Stories is far too sickly for our gritty 21st-century sensibilities, the show perks up a little in its final couple of episodes for now. ‘Signs of Life’ (appropriately) has some moments of proper tension and edginess as a woman emerges from a long coma and her daughter quickly realises that she’s not the same person she was. The resolution won’t surprise anyone and the upbeat conclusion is eye-rollingly sentimental but the narrative has a decent pulse to it and the central mystery, as plain as day to those even vaguely familiar with the genre, makes for acceptable feel-good viewing. Best of the bunch, however, is ‘The Rift’ which genuinely looks and feels like a lost episode from the 1980s series. Here, a US pilot from the 1940s crashes in Ohio in 2020, having fallen through a temporal rift which, the story tells us, has been responsible for untold ‘natural disasters’ across the ages. A special Government agency is responsible for ensuring that whatever comes through the rift goes right back in order to avoid further cataclysmic disruption, but the pilot and the young family he has befriended have other ideas. Yet again there’s really not one original idea in the whole episode but it’s hard to be sniffy about an hour of television that’s so shamelessly retro and so determined to leave its audience with a warm glow rather than the slightly dread feeling of apprehension and terror most other modern anthology shows are aiming for.

Amazing Stories is to be guardedly admired for ploughing a furrow so different to its bedfellows and there’s no reason a genre show shouldn’t try to uplift rather than unsettle. To that end Amazing Stories does its job well enough. But there are ways this can be done with stories that aren’t quite so achingly cliched and which demonstrate such a callous disinterest in and disregard for originality and, at times, their own internal logic. Amazing Stories may well be kicking against the gloomy, dystopian tone of modern anthology TV, but if it’s to hold its head above water and justify its existence, it needs to at least try to be a bit more amazing and significantly less unexceptional.

STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS – SEASON 7

REVIEWED: SEASON 7 (ALL EPISODES) | WHERE TO WATCH: DISNEY+

The Clone Wars animated TV series is regarded by many as one of the best things to come out of the prequels. With a feature-length movie and 133 episodes in total, it’s certainly one of the longest pieces of canon Star Wars fiction available and it has been consistently good throughout.

Of course, all good things have to come to an end, and anyone who’s seen Revenge of the Sith already knows how the Clone Wars concludes. The TV series worked through this by adding additional characters for us to care about. In addition to showing us that Anakin Skywalker was a flawed but decent person back then, it also gave us insight into Padmé, Obi-Wan and even Count Dooku. But more importantly, it made us care about the clones themselves, giving them individual personalities and character arcs. And of course, Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker’s padawan.

By the time we get to The Final Season, time is rapidly running out. Most viewers can see that the war is coming to an end, even if the characters cannot. The season splits into three distinct storylines. The first of these is The Bad Batch. We’re introduced to a team of clones who break the mould; each one a specialist but also an outsider. The result is ‘The Clone Wars done as an action movie in the style of The Expendables’. It’s fun and it’s easy to see why we didn’t see these characters earlier in the series as it would have distracted from the stories of the other clones. It feels like a story arc that they wanted to do for a long time, but weren’t able to get to.

The next arc is a similar sort of thing; though it features Ahsoka Tano, this is more a ‘street-level’ story, focusing on the criminal elements in the Star Wars universe. It’s underworld hi-jinks with a band of adorable misfits and it’s nice to see the failures of the Galactic Republic turned into a fun story. Fans of the underrated Solo: A Star Wars Story will likely get a kick out of this tale, and it also sets up our final arc….

If you know how Revenge of the Sith ends, then you will have good idea as to how this series comes to a close. The show does a phenomenal job of setting up all the pieces, setting up the viewers’ expectations and then making it all come together. It is quite simply astonishing. The music, the acting, the various action set-pieces are all brilliantly worked out and even though you know what’s coming there’s still plenty to surprise. Sombre, thrilling, and brilliantly done, The Final Season is a fine end to one of the best things about Star Wars.

THE ADVENTURES OF PADDINGTON VOL. 1

THE ADVENTURES OF PADDINGTON VOL. 1 (PADDINGTON FINDS A PIGEON & OTHER EPISODES) / CERT: U / SCREENPLAY: MICHAEL BOND, JON FOSTER, JAMES LAMONT / STARRING: BEN WHISHAW, MORWENNA BANKS, BOBBY BEYNON, NOEL CLARKE / RELEASE DATE: MAY 18TH

It’s pretty much common knowledge at this point that Paddington Bear is a national treasure and a very rare sort of bear. He has been loved and adored since his creation by Michael Bond in 1958, and has since gone on to have a new life on TV, most notably the iconic BBC Paddington series with Michael Hordern. Ever since then, the bear from Darkest Peru hasn’t had success as big as that until the two critically-acclaimed films in 2014 and 2017. Those two films reintroduced Paddington to a whole new audience, so now was the perfect time for a new TV show, this time spun-off from those films and bringing back Ben Wishaw to reprise his role as the titular bear.

This new show follows the formula of having ten-minute short episodes, all revolving around writing letters to his Aunt Lucy. This celebrates all the new things he’s learnt and discovered throughout the day, including making pancakes, learning magic tricks, finding a hobby or making a new friend in Pigeonton. All of these episodes are basically ‘a day in the life of Paddington’, and frankly, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s a charming, lovely little show that appeals to all ages, not just children, and perfectly captures the pure essence of Paddington, nailing the lightness, the morals and the core understanding of Paddington Bear and his world. You can watch this, and you’d feel like you’ve taken and learnt something from it, so at no point does the show feel like it’s about nothing.

What’s also impressive is the animation; despite being CGI, it looks and feels like a stop-motion animation in the vein of LAIKA’s iconic animations like The Boxtrolls or Missing Link. Even the human characters look as though they’ve stepped out of a LAIKA-produced film. This demonstrates that CGI animation can work and be effective just as long as you do it right and make it appealing to audiences without alienating them with generic-looking graphics. The voice acting is solid across the board with Wishaw especially still nailing the warmth and pure likeability of Paddington Bear. Also, the new theme song by Gary Barlow is annoyingly catchy!

Overall, The Adventures of Paddington is a lovely little show that you can just watch on TV with the whole family for a nice, warm, and comforting afternoon. It has a solid voice cast, charming little stories and great animation, making this recommended viewing for any Paddington fan.

EDGE OF EXTINCTION

EDGE OF EXTINCTION / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: ANDREW GILBERT / STARRING: LUKE HOBSON, GEORGIE SMIBERT, CHRIS KAYE, BRYN HODGEN / RELEASE DATE: MAY 18TH (VOD), JULY 13TH (DVD)

The end of the world isn’t far from peoples’ minds at the moment, but writer/director Andrew Gilbert’s film takes us to a post-apocalypse that has been caused by war, just like in the fears of the old days.

The nuclear winter is over, and a young man (Hobson) is struggling to survive out of the way of people, hidden in a storage locker. Going out only to find water and hunt for supplies, he comes across someone else. It’s a girl who claims to be alone and wants to join him. Being a nice guy, he lets her and is duly screwed over. That’s the least of his worries, however, as the roaming gang of cannibals have him – and, particularly, the girl – in their sight.

The post-apocalypse subgenre might old hat these days with the likes of The Road and The Walking Dead doing such a fantastic job of showing how bad things could get, but Edge of Extinction manages to make a decent fist of creating a believable, terrifying future. Although lacking the budget of the aforementioned properties, Gilbert has crafted a grounded, captivating vision of how life could be. Major recognition should go to whoever found the location, as they are perfect. It’s rare to get a low budget film run over two hours, and going in, we were worried that the running time here would stretch things to tedium. We’re delighted to say that’s not the case, as this is genuinely enthralling and it’s easy to root for the lead, and as his story plays out (we see the origin of his solitude and the start of the end of the world as we know it in flashback), he becomes an unlikely hero.

As we’ve come to expect with the subgenre, there are monsters in this apocalyptic vision. Here, they come in human form; no one can fully be trusted, but the band of cannibals are archetypal foes. Devolved from humanity, they epitomise evil. Having such an uncompromising enemy makes a rescue mission that’s attempted during the film and subsequent seize incredibly suspenseful and exciting.

With some amazing locations and great cinematography, Edge of Extinction is highly recommended.