Directed By: Jose Ulloa
Written By: Jose Ulloa and Miguel Sanz
Cinematography: Antonio Millan
Editor: Emilio Ortiz
Cast: Craig Hill, Patty Shepard, Teresa Gimpera, Fernando Hilbeck, Pedro Maria Sanchez, Fernando Millet
Five strangers bound by concrete and dread hole up beneath a scorched America, waiting for radiation to thin enough to breathe. Food vanishes. Medicine runs dry. Nerves fray into territory no bunker was designed to contain. The youngest among them, restless and half-feral with need, makes a decision that nobody else has the courage to face. Above, the world is poison. Below, so is everything they’ve become to each other. The shelter stops being a refuge almost immediately, turning instead into a slow-burning pressure cooker of want, boredom, and bodies too close together for too long.
This is the kind of movie that seems like it should be pure exploitation. It opens with plenty of shots of New York, establishing where we supposedly are, only for the film to later send a character outside into what looks suspiciously like the suburbs. Add the fact that this is an Italian production with dubbed English dialogue that doesn’t always agree with the actors’ mouths, and the movie is already having a bit of an identity crisis. Everyone is apparently American, even when absolutely nothing about the production agrees.
But once you get past that, there’s actually a pretty interesting little film here.
This is a post-apocalyptic drama with some nudity, some sex, and just enough exploitation seasoning to remind you what aisle you’re standing in. For the most part, though, it plays like a chamber piece. Five people: two couples and one of their sons are trapped inside a futuristic apartment building, waiting for news about what’s happening outside.
And, naturally, they have nothing to do but turn on each other.
Each character is basically a different type, and after being stuck together for what seems like weeks or months, the personalities begin rubbing each other the wrong way. We enter the story somewhere in the middle of their isolation, watching these people slowly come apart while the outside world becomes almost secondary.
It’s predictable. You can usually see where things are going; the only question is when the movie is going to get there. Still, it manages to be compelling because the characters gradually reveal themselves, and there’s something effective about watching ordinary human behavior become more frightening than the apocalypse itself.
It’s almost like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD without the living dead. No zombies necessary when people are perfectly capable of becoming their own worst enemies.
The second half gets particularly cold, especially in the relationships. It sometimes feels as though death is the only thing capable of making these people realize they actually care about one another or at least about whoever has just become the latest victim.
The premise is interesting, the movie keeps moving, and despite its ridiculous touches, it’s never really boring. There’s something here worth watching, even if the film occasionally seems unsure whether it wants to be serious science fiction, exploitation, or an Italian movie pretending very hard to be an American one.
Patty Shepard is a stand out as at first she comes across as more of a minor ungrateful character whose wild end up, causing the initial dissension, but as the film goes along, she becomes more and more important as her character grows and seems maybe one of the few characters who hasn’t totally lost their mind. As at first, they play her more as a kind of flirtatious, easy character. as she is quite eye-catching throughout with her piercing eyes. Though she proves to be more than that throughout the film.
In the end, The filmfeels like one of those thought provoking science-fiction novels you discover in a used bookstore. The premise sounds better than the writing, there are some genuinely good ideas buried inside, and you wish the execution were just a little stronger.
It’s not great. It’ kind of cheesy. It’s not exactly sophisticated. But it’s certainly not forgettable. And sometimes, in a post-apocalyptic movie, keeping your attention is already a small victory.
Grade: C+
