2067 Review: A Persuasive Film about the Future with Irritating Errors.
2067 is a movie of what could’ve been. What a wasted potential. Such an interesting concept, vision, gorgeous cinematography, beautiful soundtrack, but all wasted due to ridiculous plot holes in the storyline!
Seth Larney’s “2067” is more infuriating than the average indie sci-fi misfire because there’s so much potential implanted in its crafty story. The optimistic, twisting core of what the movie is about will keep Sci-Fi fans engaged even as the increasingly bad performances and frustrating writing pushes them away at the same time.
Kodi Smit-McPhee is quite simply ineffective as Ethan Whyte, a resident of a bleak future that has been torn apart by climate change. His performance reminded me of the whining Anakin Skywalker, possibly worse. The basic story revolves around the planet dying very quickly around, leading to a lack of oxygen and widespread disease.
Life is rough for our lead Ethan, who works on the city’s unstable nuclear reactor, but is then presented with a crazy opportunity. It turns out that scientists have developed a portal to the future, which has a different tenderness than it would in a normal time travel movie if you think about where this planet is headed. Imagine discovering travel to the future is possible and receiving a message back from hundreds of years from now when you live in a time when it feels like your generation could be the last. The fact that a message comes back from centuries ahead of now doesn’t just say something about technology but says more about human survival. There’s someone on the other end. How did they reverse the course of an increasingly unlivable planet? And why is the message they’re bouncing back “Send Ethan Whyte”?
Ethan is told he can jump forward, but that they don’t really have a way to get him back. Can he figure out why the future wants him, if he’s the one to make that future possible, and survive? When he lands in the far future, he finds something entirely unexpected. There’s plant growth, but no people, and a skeleton that makes his entire venture all the more bizarre. It’s a solid story that clearly owes a great deal to famous time travel sci-fi films of the past both in how it plays out and why Ethan is the key to the future. It’s the kind of movie that’s easy to stick with just to see how its mysteries unfold. Everything led to a highly desirable conclusion only for it to fail miserably. Ethan changes the probable already written, and unchanging reality to change the future for humanity. What’s even worse is that his skeleton disappears and the once lifeless planet (in the same reality) is now filled with eco-friendly human cities. I know the idea and theme are great and provocative but it needs to be handled well if you’re using it in a Sci-Fi time travel story. Have they never heard of the grandfather paradox? Even a kid knows about it. Changing fate may be possible for an alternate reality, not your own.
Overall, Smit-McPhee is either poorly directed or cast here, never being able to figure his character out and coming off almost harshly in his inconsistent emotions. That is not the only drawback, though. ambitious storytelling is valuable, but Larney fails his own idea by not having a stronger edit on his story, dialogue, and a more confident hand when it comes to directing the performance.
2067 is clearly a low-budget outcome, but Larney makes the most of the resources at hand, employing a vision of the future that isn’t metal and fire but green with vegetation. Even with its flaws, it’s a movie that makes us question our future as well as the direction of the human race.
KRAN SCORE: 49%
STW: 15/30, D: 7/25, C: 6/8, E: 0/5, A: 3/10, PVD: 10/12, S: 8/10
