This first short film effort by David Levy comes out of the gate strong.
From just the first few shots we get this gritty meets high-tech view of the world Levy is trying to create. It's a world that's a little bit Mad Max, a little bit Terminator, a little bit planet Jakku from Star Wars, all nicely infused with a whole lot of that compelling sci-fi "atmosphere." That is to the say, it's a feast for the eyes, ears, and mind. The incredible imagery and the attention to detail in production aspects from costuming to the soundtrack are clearly the strongest features of the work. From my understanding, this short was created with the hopes of making it into a feature and it'd definitely be something worth checking out if that were to happen.
Being a unabashed advocate for strong female characters, I love Levy's choice to make the only human left on the Earth a woman who knows how to handle herself in this hard-edged world. The relationship she shares with the mechanical beings she's left with on the planet are all the more interesting for it. Despite the fluctuations in the acting performance, the main character comes across as layered and interesting, full of strength but also vulnerability. Indeed, one of most interesting moments of the short is when we see her reach out and hold the hand of Marker, one of the robots, in an attempt to acquire his help in finding other life forms left on Earth. Just that one moment begs so many questions: Can he be trusted to help her? At what capacity does feel human-like emotions as she does? What is the nature of their relationship? Needless to say, there's a lot of feature length potential for the protagonist and the supporting characters we meet embedded in the story.
Another of the comments on here talked about the short starting off strong but not having a definitive ending. I think that can be explained with the intent of Levy to pack into so short a time all the potential for a feature length storyline. Based off of how strong the concept for the world is and how many things Levy nailed here, I'm confident that given the time to really flesh the ending out he could indeed build up to and provide that cathartic resolution viewers of similar mindsets are hoping for.
This short really reminded me of feature length Halo film I once saw that I think many people would count out if the budget wasn't high enough or if some relentless marketing campaign hadn't flooded two months of their lives with high octane, unskippable Youtube ads. But I think this is a mistake. It's a treat getting to watch a brand new world, complete with complex and intriguing characters, be realized on screen in such a clear way and after seeing this, I'm hoping Levy gets the chance to fully realize the vision. Or at the very least, I hope he gets to lend his strong conception skills to projects that would be much improved with his considerable talent behind them.
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