Rating: D
Dir: Kerry Anne Mullaney
Star: Alton Milne, Sandra Louise Douglas, Sharon Osdin
This really feels like a film made during the COVID shutdown. As well as the general theme of a world ravaged by a contagious pandemic, it has a very small cast and largely unfolds in a single, isolated location – perfect for health and hygiene management. So after seeing the hero carefully don his mask before entering a building (above), it was weird to discover this was released over a decade before terms like “wet market”, “flattening the curve” and “PPE” became part of the common culture. I think it’s more inspired by 28 Days Later, which had come out in 2002. The aggressive behavior of the infected here will seem rather familiar to those who have seen Days.
Daniel (Milne) is on the run, six months after the outbreak which has sent civilization to the brink. His car runs out of fuel in the middle of nowhere, and he takes refuge in what appears to be a deserted farmhouse. It isn’t, and its resident, April (Douglas), is none too happy to see a visitor, greeting him with the business end of a shotgun. However, they eventually come to an uneasy truce. Daniel begins to suspect April may be immune to the disease, and could be the key to a cure – the current vaccine might cause more issues than it solves (an eerie foreshadowing of anti-vaxxers). She disagrees, and matters are complicated further by the arrival of a third person, Kate (Osdin), to their refuge.
Unfortunately, it’s not very interesting. It was reportedly filmed in two weeks, on a budget of just four thousand pounds, and neither lead actor appears to have had much experience. In particular, this is Douglas’s only credit listed in the IMDb – and the longer this goes on, the more it makes sense, because she’s not very good. Another problem is the flashback-heavy structure, and there are times where what is being described, is considerably more interesting than what we actually get. The lack of resources here, means the makers largely have to resort to “tell, don’t show”, a fatal flaw. The whole trope of “You must leave in the morning… Oh, alright you can stay,” quickly approaches deceased equine level.
While not the film’s fault, my tolerance for this kind of COVID-adjacent movie is now very limited. Truth be told, if this hadn’t been set in Scotland, I might not have bothered. And even that’s a bit of a cheat, since it was filmed in the Scottish lowlands – which, speaking as a Highlander, are about as remote and isolated as Great Yarmouth. The landscapes are still attractive, and from a technical viewpoint, it looks and sounds okay, if too dark in the (frequent) night scenes. There’s just not enough to sustain interest, and by the point the supposed dramatic secret hidden in April’s past gets somewhat revealed, I was sorely unable to give much of a damn. I’ll tell you this though: if there’s another pandemic, we are not letting anyone in.