Writer-director Seth Larney gives humanity a frighteningly plausible progression toward extinction in the opening scene of 2067. It’s the kind of scene one expects in a movie like this, in which the relatively few humans left must find a way to survive the apocalypse. The details, though, are more believably based in what we already know about the natural endpoint of change in our climate: What were once gradual changes have snowballed into expedited and radical shifts, leaving the landscape of Earth practically uninhabitable for humans. People must wear masks and protective gear when they venture outside their homes, and if that isn’t downright creepy in its (almost assuredly accidental) timing, well, what can be said, really.
The plot follows the old template of an unassuming everyman who must accept his destiny as an all-important savior. In this case, it’s utility worker Ethan Whyte (Kodi Smit-McPhee), whose job becomes exponentially more stressful when he is tasked by Regina Jackson (Deborah Mailman), the chief technical officer of his company, to help save the last of humanity. This turns out to be quite personal for Ethan, whose father, Richard (Aaron Glenane), and mother, Selene (Leeanna Walsman), both died under separate (but equally mysterious) circumstances in his childhood, and whose wife, Xanthe (Sana’a Shaik), is slowly dying from the same vague ailments that wiped out most of the planet’s population. It seems that a message has been received from the future: to send Ethan forward to the year 2474.
The mission is to find a cure, but it nearly derails almost immediately upon Ethan’s arrival to the future. Not only does his pod explode, but he also comes upon a skeleton wearing his clothes and a label with his own name, carrying the same scanning device as he currently holds (but dilapidated and low on battery power), and bearing a gunshot wound to the head. This mystery, plus the arrival in the future of Ethan’s co-worker and closest friend, Jude Mathers (Ryan Kwanten), for reasons that are best left to be discovered for oneself, rather distracts Larney’s screenplay from following through on the more interesting and urgent plot point. It leads to a great deal of wheel-spinning in the middle, as Ethan, Jude and the audience become preoccupied with the rules and paradoxes of time travel.
For instance, if this truly is Ethan’s skeleton, does that mean the living Ethan will suffer the same fate, or will his discovery of his own corpse change that fate? What, too, does this mean for the search for a cure? Does the death signify a failure on his part to follow through, or does the puzzle lead to another solution? This is a lot for a fairly simply plotted film to bear, and the strain becomes too much, even as the plot circles back around to the business of the cure, of how Ethan’s childhood ties into everything and what purpose Jude serves. That resolution, when it comes, is quite affecting but too late to count for much. Larney and his team of production designers and visual effects artists have crafted a convincing future in 2067, but the film doesn’t quite hold up on a narrative level.
The post 2067 appeared first on Spectrum Culture.
