Director – Ben Wheatley – 2025 – UK – Cert. 15 – 90m
*****
An abducted journalist finds himself involved in multi-dimensional travel – quasi-experimental and completely bonkers sci-fi drama embarks on a tour of UK cinemas, from the smallest to the largest, on Thursday, January 15th
We are watching black and white footage. (The film occasionally uses colour, for instance footage of Sam Riley – from Islands, Jan-Ole Gerster, 2025; Firebrand, Karim Ainouz, 2023; Control, Anton Corbijn, 2007 – in a grey-blue suit reminiscing about what happened to his character). “25 kilometres from the epicentre,” says a voice, instantly recognisable as Bill Nighy (from Living, Oliver Hermanus, 2022; Minamata, Andrew Levitas, 2020; I Capture the Castle, Tim Fywell, 2003), who performs similar duties throughout, including reading the film’s title when it appears moments and several shots later on the screen.
Some of those shots are worth talking about in detail, because they help convey everything that’s great about this lovingly hand-to-mouth-crafted movie. They include library footage – a jet trail across what could be detail of a planet, troops watching an A-bomb explosion from the trenches.
As Nighy speaks, two tiny static figures stand in a landscape (which looks like a model although it could be a still photographic element behind which is composited live action footage of clouds moving across in a sky.… Read the rest