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| Images courtesy IFC |
In a dark and desolate dystopian future, a young girl must survive a post apocalyptic landscape where mankind has been nearly destroyed and their environment has been shredded by calamity. A mysterious class rules from the technologically advanced citadel as small pockets of mankind do their best to survive via bio-hacking and altering DNA.
Tones of The Hunger Games and Lord of the Flies among several other young adult tales are touched upon as Vesper attempts to traverse the “new dark ages” with her bed ridden, ailing father (played by Richard Brake). The resulting effort is a mixed bag that features some outstanding visual effects work that’s ultimately hampered by a slow burn that doesn’t ever pay off. Concluding with a final shot that’s reminiscent of War of the Worlds, this sophomore feature is high on drama and sci-fi but lacks any real momentum or quality storytelling. There are some great actors here including lead player Raffiella Chapman in the lead and character actor Eddie Marsan, but the overall screenplay fails to engage both its cast and viewership.
A decade after their indie science fiction spectacle Vanishing Waves, Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper pair for another spectacular looking fairy tale that visualizes steampunk styled environments and visuals with science fiction tropes of survival at the end of the world as we know it. The scope of Vesper is so much bigger than what they ever put to screen. This will be altogether unsatisfying for their audience as too many story points are never expounded on. Perhaps the budget limited the amount of vision they could put to screen or how deep the story could go. It just feels like there was so much more they could have done considering how interesting their world building efforts are.
Set in an a-typical looking future that’s tainted with ashy looking grays, tans, greens and blacks, Vesper takes long strides to capture the cinematic style of Children of Men, The Road, Annihilation, The Last of Us or any other various stories about human endurance against the bleakest of odds. Focusing on the 13 year old girl and title character, Vesper spotlights the collapse of civilization and the will to go on despite the sheer nightmare of living through a most definitive end of human kind and the environment around us. Vesper is centered on creating an interesting lead character where so many other films would devolve into straight action or strict visual spectacle. Yet, this altogether hurts the film’s totality. There are so many big ideas here that never get their due even when it’s so extremely beautiful to look at.
Vesper qualifies as a genre entry that rides a fine line between what we've come to expect from this sub-genre and its art house leanings. The resulting film is one that is a real jumbled effort. The storytelling is never engaging enough as we're again reminded that the future is never kind on film. We know what to expect when it comes to movies like these and Vesper does nothing fresh or new with its runtime. Samper and Buozyte had some huge ideas with Vanishing Waves. We expected the same from them here. And that's the biggest disappointment.
-CG
