Director: A.T. White
Year: 2019
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Plot:
After hearing of her friends' death, a woman tries to help clean up her life at the apartment complex where she used to live only to suddenly find that a strange cataclysm has struck the planet leaving here as the last one left and must try to survive in order to carry on humanity.
Review:
This was a decent and wholly enjoyable horror/drama. What this one does exceptionally well is provide a thoroughly engrossing and compelling look at grief. The entire first half here, from the awkwardness of a funeral gathering with people treating the occasion the exact opposite of how they would've wanted to be treated, the mundane nature of looking after the collected belongings to the perceived pleasure she receives thinking of their memories together, seems as a fine starting point to this one. That it all leads back to her loneliness even after the discovery of the creatures outside that have trapped her within the building keeping her isolated from everyone else, works to enhance this with the discovery of the tapes left behind predicting everything.
As well, the film's other big positive is the sense of post-apocalyptic loneliness driven by the society. The fact that she's alone in the town, with no people or animals around except a pet turtle left behind, creates a fascinating look at what's happening in that society. That she finds herself trying to come to terms with her friends' death in the midst of all the various encounters with the creatures throughout town offers up the kind of thrilling follow-up required here For the creature encounters to offer some action. With the chase through the supermarket leading back to her car outside to the creatures attempting to break into her house, there's some fine work here in that regard.
That said, there are numerous highly detrimental issues within this one. The main factor against the film is that, as a horror film, this one fails rather hard. The entire purpose behind the invasion is completely missed, leaving us with no clue how this apocalyptic setup transpired. If this is a group of creatures from another dimension or outer space or wherever is never mentioned, leaving the whole plot about the desolate nature of the outside world a mystery without saying anything about what's causing it or how it happened. Coupled with a completely infuriating idea that everything here is a dream sequence or a brief, unexplained flash sequence that could've used more leaves this wholly unsatisfying.
That unsatisfying feeling also accounts for the film's dull and bland midsection. This one feels really boring in parts where there's incredibly long sections of time focusing on her doing nothing but going through the motions of living alone in the apartment, from washing up to checking on the equipment of the house or just engaging in pseudo-intellectual gibberish about how lonely she's become. The main storyline here about the series of escapades through town in order to gather up a series of tapes about what's going on make no sense and just feels like a cheap way to pad out a weak story as this goes on way too long. These here are the main detrimental factors.
Overview: ***/5
An overall failure as a horror film but still generally enjoyable as a meditation on grief and loneliness that includes a bit of horror elements, the film has some truly enjoyable elements on display alongside some frustrating elements. Give this a look if these kinds of existential dramas or arthouse horror/drama films are appealing while those looking for a straightforward creature feature horror should avoid overall.
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