Touchdown
Few low-budget 76-minute British films can brag that they were shot in London, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Newcastle, Washington and Dorset. I get a sense that writer-director-producer Josephine Rose – who’s worked on aboveground stuff like Slaughterhouse Rulez and the 2016 Dad’s Army – has a big address book and good connections to call in favours … plus a knack for spinning news footage, stolen location shots and zeitgeisty concepts into a disturbing whole. In the aftermath of a worldwide pelting by meteors, a few mutant CGI tentacles poke out of plugholes and waterways, a lot of people just plain disappear and the global authorities get together to institute lockdown squared … while a few paranoia boffins (Jason Flemyng, Nancy Crane, Ingrid Pittana) try to float theories about what’s actually happening. We see more untrustworthy police drones than killer aliens, which ramps up the paranoia.
Perhaps on the model of Host, the story is told through an online friend group who are split up across the world – there are relationship tensions and personal events in the mix, but they get superseded quickly – and have only each other and their dodgy internet connection to rely on to get through the crisis. Jamie (Clinton Liberty) in London is the effective lead, but we hear from others around the world – Emma (Cressida Bonas) in Hong Kong, Pete (Kai Luke Brummer) in South Africa, Chloe (Lily Frazer) in a hotel room and Jerry (Will Attenborough) by the seaside. It’s a mosaic rather than a story, and possibly has more editorial content than it needs – but it does spin recent experiences into a world-spanning nightmare.
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