Polygon is on site at Fantastic Fest 2022 to report on new horror, sci-fi, cult and action movies hitting theaters and streaming. This review was published to coincide with the film’s Fantastic Fest premiere.
Grim futures and desperate situations are so common onscreen that they’ve come to feel like the default mode of sci-fi storytelling, especially in low-budget films. crap sack world Or if a future fascist dystopia stands out above all else, so many sci-fi stories tell us that every aspect of our lives can lead us to some sort of apocalypse. I am clearly warning you.indie sci-fi movies Vesper It’s no exception to that rule — it takes place in a future where Earth has been rendered nearly uninhabitable, with survivors hiding in glowing enclaves called Citadels or living day-to-day lives in the wreckage outside the walls of the Citadel. But dystopian sci-fi has rarely been as delicately and beautifully detailed as Christina Buozaite and Bruno Sumper’s new film.
Vesper At the same time, like a witty budget indie dual Like Alex Garland’s $50 million passion project annihilationIt’s a small story, sometimes so quiet and minimalist that even having two characters in the same room feels overcrowded. At the movie release vanishing waves, Buozyte and Samper do an impressive job of creating a plausible, tangible world around these quiet spaces. Landscapes tell stories as effectively as painstaking descriptions.
opening title card label VesperAn ugly version of the future as the “New Dark Ages”. Faced with an environmental collapse, mankind sought to stem the catastrophe through genetic engineering. However, modified viruses and organisms escaped into the wild, taking on the role of invasive species, wiping out the Earth’s original biosphere and replacing aggressive new forms of life. The only seeds that grow are designed to produce barren crops, requiring outsiders to replace or purchase new seeds each growing season.
Thirteen-year-old Vesper (Lafiera Chapman) is adamantly determined to apply what she knows about science to the problem, tinkering in dirty labs, splicing DNA and building the Citadel. Find out how to unlock seeds or grow your own edible plants. But she’s trying to feed herself and her paralyzed father, Darius (Richard her brakes), with whatever she can glean or beg from their deadly surroundings, so the project survives. I have to sit in the back seat for
There’s no timeline for when or how this happened, but the setting shows all signs of a world far more advanced than ours before it fell apart. Neither can he, but a dirty plug leading to his brain allows him to accompany Vesper on rounds via hovering telepresence drones. Meanwhile, Darius’ silent predator brother, Jonas (Eddie Marsan), runs a small, deserted enclave nearby, where he raises herds of children, whose blood is the Citadel and has become a valuable commodity in the trade of
Vesper is his niece, who has just passed puberty, but he professes to want her as a breeding stock. In a genre where evil often comes in the form of an army of murderous robots or towering and powerful villains, Darius stands out as a kind of monster that is deeper and more personal just by being possessive. Her crisis, and her boundary-testing way of him touching her when we both know she can’t afford to piss him off.
Later, a drone from one of the citadels crash-lands near the enclave, and Vesper spots an elf woman named Kamelia (Rosie McEwen), wounded near the wreckage. Camellia promises that Vesper himself will be allowed her entrance if Vesper takes her and her father Elias safely to the Citadel. That’s all Vesper wants, but there are, of course, some major problems with this offer.
Vesper‘s basic story unfolds in a familiar way from a small science fiction movie. Prospect as oversized and pretentious as ElysiumWhenever a faceless group of all-powerful elites face off against a single person determined not to live in their shadow, a small hope builds and dashes along the path of finding some kind of path. It’s pretty clear that there are a lot. And just about everyone else in the story is there to garner support from those elites and get in the way of the protagonist. Vesper Not enough to distinguish its dynamics from many other similar films. Much of that action seems inevitable, so there’s little room for surprises.
And the film as a whole often feels like a hodgepodge of elements from memorable and often cult sci-fi films. ProspectDuncan Jones’ Solemn Intellectual and Inescapable Repression Moondull palette and tense, exhausted despair son of man; more. Vesper Either of those, or create a comfortable double feature in movies like the Lord, survivalistAlso cargo.
but what Vesper It is not the uniqueness of the idea that is remembered, but the uniqueness of the method of expression. The distinction begins with Chapman’s performance in the title role. She’s not the fiercely combative hero of so many dystopian futuristic tales, but she’s a bowed-up, cautious survivalist who’s clearly learned caution and care even at the age of 13. , gives Vesper a grit that feels unusual for a story of this kind. Her every move acknowledges her history as a young teenager with too much responsibility and too much freedom. Nothing can stop her from doing what she wants. She allows him to make her own choices, but she does them without apology or remorse.She is both meek and iron-willed, an interesting combination.
The details about the world emanating from her past and her performances are all the more welcome, as they require no one to elaborate. The same goes for production design and worldbuilding. It’s seen in details, like the unfamiliarly rendered face of Darius’ hover drone, clearly drawn by a much younger Vesper who was trying to make him look more comfortable and human. Like the secret behind ‘Pilgrim’, it’s seen in a compelling mystery. They hide their faces and constantly collect inedible scraps to transport to unknown destinations. No one dares to explain that giant, collapsing octopus-like machines like Amazon’s robots litter the landscape. Tales from the Loop series, they are only part of the background of the world, a clear remnant of previous failed efforts to reclaim the world for humanity broader than the few closed survivors.
VesperAside from Chapman’s resilient determination and Marusan’s subtle, unremarkable threat, Vesper’s strongest asset is the way it uses special effects to fill its world with a seemingly endless array of sinister life. found state — slow-moving tentacle thing (Plant? Animal? Both? Neither?) opportunistically caught in all her wounds—it was vividly terrifying, unruly as the obvious result of someone being unconscious outside. Wherever the Vesper goes, it’s agitated, pounding, and hungrily open to trees and plants. Darius’ hover opens her drone to reveal a disgustingly Cronenberg-esque bio-her technology, all made up of frills, membranes, and thick, gooey slime. Even Citadel ships look like nasty insectoid monsters.
Inevitably, sci-fi fans who like the acceleration and frequent action sequences of Star Wars shows will mandalorian When boba fett book will complain Vesper Too late and too quiet.A valid complaint for those who said the same annihilationor similar to Andrei Tarkovsky’s stalker Before that, or other works of science fiction that are more cerebral than physical. Moon or in Kogonada after yan, Vesper A tale familiar enough, but told with thousands of creepy, vibrant, creepy, graceful notes.
Vesper opens in theaters and VOD on September 30th.