Survive (2024)

"Well Executed French Post-Apocalypse Science Fiction"

After its UK premiere at this year's Frightfest, Frederic Jardin's really rather good French post-apocalypse movie gets a Digital release from Signature Entertainment.

Tom (Andreas Pietschmann) and his family are enjoying an ocean holiday on their boat when a worldwide apocalypse occurs. The magnetic poles are reversed causing all sea water to shift onto land and leaving the ocean beds as dry terrain. Marooned their one hope is to reach the bathysphere of oceanographer Nao (Olivier Ho Hio Hen) before, according to his instruments, the poles are to reverse again and the waters will come flooding back to their original position.

Don't worry too much about the science in SURVIVE. Instead just go with it because this is actually a very decent race against time post apocalypse thriller with some surprises along the way (which I'm not going to spoil). The landscape vistas are impressive and probably looked even more so on a cinema screen. 

It's a French movie, of course, so there's going to be urinating and nihilism but this is still a very good mashup of SF ideas, mainly riffing on Charles Eric Maine's fantastically bleak British SF novel The Tide Went Out. In fact SURVIVE is positively cheery compared with that so perhaps the nihilism comment is a bit excessive. But you can rely on there being some unexpected shocks along the way.

SURVIVE is an impressive piece of post-apocalypse cinema, so much so that it wouldn't be at all surprising if an American remake is in the works. By the time you get to the end you can imagine Roland Emmerich taking out his phone to contact Universal. Let's have a trailer:

Frederic Jardin's SURVIVE is out on Digital from Signature Entertainment on Monday 30th September 2024

Saint Clare (2024)

Director Mitzi Peirone's latest gets its UK premiere at Frightfest prior to a digital release by 101 Films later in the year.

Clare (Bella Thorne) lives in a small town in the US with her grandparents. When she was young she fought and killed a large bearded man who threatened her camping trip. Now she possesses an ability that allows her to identify other men with the same intentions and kill them. She's aided by the ghost of a mailman (Frank Whaley) who died in front of her in the woods.

She attends a party where there's a police raid, and finds herself in the bedroom of the boy who invited her where she discovers a set of compromising photographs, including one of a girl who has recently disappeared. It turns out that she is only the latest of a staggering 53 young women to have vanished in the same town over a period of years. 

SAINT CLARE is the second feature from Mitzi Peirone who's first film, BRAID, also received its UK premiere at Frightfest. At the time I suggested that film probably needed a bit more thinking through so as not to come across solely as a load of pretentious old bollocks. With SAINT CLARE there's more of a plot, the art direction and location work is gorgeous, and the acting's not bad, including turns from Rebecca De Mornay and Ryan Phillippe.

Sadly, however, the direction is ghastly, with the result the film reeks of 'immature sixth form film student project' in its overwhelming and frequently nauseating Dutch camera angles and wobbly hand held shots, none of which help the film and many of which actually hinder it. It's a slight step up from BRAID but at this rate it's going to be a while before Peirone comes up with something watchable. 

SAINT CLARE will be getting a Digital release from 101 Films