I came across this on MAX and I thought it would be an interesting sci-fi movie. It is not.

I’m not really sure what it is. It is some kind of weird blend of documentary, post-apocalyptic wasteland and history lesson.

It is also one of the most depressing movie I have seen in a long time.

We are shown Ghost (Samantha Morton) from the year 2073, who spends nearly her whole time on screen doing a voice-over. There is not much of a narrative structure to the 2073 story. Ghost tried to determine how the earth got to this point.

At that point, it goes back in time, using real life news footage to try and explain how the world fell into such a horrendous future. It looked at real life politicians, world leaders, AI, and the billionaires, blending them into the structure of the story that leads to the destruction of this movies’ fictional future.

This British docudrama feels much like those films made by Dinesh D’Souza, except from the other side of the aisle. It seems like there is more fearmongering in this film so, even in the manner in which it may be calling out important pieces, it undermines its own argument.

And the sci-fi section is just not compelling enough to balance out the news reel footage. The filmmakers took a big swing, but, unfortunately, this does not work. I found this to be depressing, and, worst of all, not entertaining. Even those movies that are meant to show the downside of the human condition have to be a compelling watch. This just is not.

1 star