honey, quick! go find a makeup artist! now!
R
Rory Cochrane, Mary McCormack
Brad: You know what’s gonna happen, right? We’re gonna end up on one of those day time talk shows. A real sappy one, ya know? And we’ll take their calls, and I’ll ramble on about how we managed to…survive. And about how much I love you and how much you mean to me and…you’re the reason that I get out of bed every morning…and how you make my life complete…
After several bombs go off in Los Angeles, a man is unable to go find his wife and is forced to seal up his house in order to protect himself from the dangerous chemicals released by the bombs. When his wife shows up at the house, already infected by the chemicals, he can’t let her in without risking his own life. The two struggle to find a way to save her before she succumbs to the effects of the chemicals.
Sometimes a movie has a good basic premise, but it’s not a layered enough story to stretch out over the running time of a movie. This is such a film. I think it would be more suited for a 30 minute episode of the Twilight Zone perhaps. Not that there’s anything supernatural going on, but it has a bit of the feel that series had. I’ll get more into that later.
I didn’t really buy some of the characters’ actions, especially early on. We see some police shoot an unarmed citizen at one point. Why? Because there needs to be a threat later that keeps Lexi (McCormack) from wanting to be seen by the police. She can’t go looking for help because she might get shot. There are a few other instances of odd behavior, but I don’t want to give away too many plot developments.
Cochrane (trying desperately not to be Ron Livingston) and McCormack are both good, even if their characters are a little on the dull side. It’s just that the scenes get repetitive. There’s only so many ways you can show that she’s stuck outside and he’s sad about it.
Adding more to the Twilight Zone feel of it all is a twist ending that seems like it’s having a character get their comeuppance, but in this case it doesn’t seem like this character deserves such a fate. In this “what if” movie that seemed to be going for a realistic feel, this seemed more like an ending meant solely to entertain. I admittedly did not see that end coming, but I was still somewhat disappointed with it. It felt like it belonged in an entirely different kind of movie.
Overall, the idea presented here was interesting, it’s made well and acted well, but it just wasn’t enough to fill an entire movie.
Buy a generator. You never know how important having working air conditioning will be.
10 – 2.3 for being a thin story stretched over a long running time – .7 for an interesting but inappropriate ending – 1 for a few unbelievable plot elements = 6.0
The Robot Who Likes Pretty Things 