Last man on Earth movies have been done before. 28 Days Later goes the zombie horror route, while I Am Legend and similar offerings hinge on oppressive loneliness. With Bokeh, co-writer-directors Geoffrey Orthwein and Andrew Sullivan aim for a stylish apocalypse in the vein of the latter. Its reliance on beautiful cinematography and atmospheric music, however, makes it more or less a moody advertisement for Icelandic tourism.
Jenai (Maika Monroe) and Riley (Matt O’Leary) are a young couple on holiday on the bucolic Scandinavian island, but their relationship as well as their individual personalities are vaguely drawn, mere impressions rather than concretely developed characters. They just seem like your generic hipster couple. Riley even insists on carrying around a vintage Rolleiflex camera. But then Jenai sees a flash of brilliant light and the pair wakes up the next morning alone in Reykjavik. They can’t find another soul, their confusion and questions running rampant. “If it were a plague, where are all the bodies?” “If it was aliens, where are the ships?” And the inevitable, “Is this the Rapture?” Disbelief and denial abound, but the couple can’t ignore the fact that the news sites don’t update and the TV channels don’t broadcast.
The setup in and of itself is interesting, but by no means revolutionary. The fact that there is seemingly one man and one woman left on Earth poses interesting questions about the future of the human race. But Bokeh doesn’t concern itself with that or any other questions. The point isn’t an answer to why or how this happened but how Jenai and Riley will react and cope.
A claustrophobic apocalypse film set in isolated Iceland has some appeal as an aesthetic psychological suspense thriller. But Orthwein and Sullivan are big fans of montage, specifically atmospheric slow-motion montages of the couple continuing to explore Iceland’s natural wonders. Jenai’s reaction leans toward depression, loss and loneliness. Riley is of the opinion that there is still an opportunity to live a great life. Let the vacation continue, if you will. Questions about how to develop the pictures taken with his beloved Rolleiflex don’t really occur to him.
The trouble with Bokeh is that it doesn’t build real conflict. The premise shows potential, and the characters—if properly fleshed out—could have had an existential battle of wills vis-à-vis their survival plan. But rather than explore in depth their philosophical differences about the end of the world, Orthwein and Sullivan neglect to expand beyond the visuals of two people wandering a deserted city. In the brief instances where the potential for conflict arise, it is almost immediately quashed. Riley carelessly injures himself, prompting Jenai to warn him about the simple dangers in a world without doctors. It doesn’t come up again. Later, Riley gets trapped in an elevator. But just as soon as he begins to panic, the door opens. We are given glimpses of how it could end horribly for them, but tension-filled situations diffuse so quickly that Bokeh feels more like watching a couple on vacation than unwittingly becoming the future of humanity.
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