A movie with a title like this, is either going to be a lot of fun … or a stinker.
Happily, the former is true.
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| Joel (Dylan O'Brien) finds that his new canine companion is quite useful in what has become an extremely dangerous world. |
I know we’ve been deluged by “giant monster” movies of late — Godzilla, King Kong, Pacific Rim and so forth — but this one’s different. In addition to the terrific effects, the secondary attraction is Brian Duffield and Matthew Robinson’s cheeky script, which goes a long way toward turning star Dylan O’Brien into a most unlikely action hero.
On top of which, local viewers will get a kick out of the fact that some of these events are set in Fairfield, of all places. (Filming actually took place in Australia.)
At some point into the future, a massive asteroid threatens to wreak havoc when it hits Earth. Governments cooperatively scramble to successfully destroy it, but the process blankets our planet with a chemical residue that causes cold-blooded animals — bugs, amphibians, sea creatures — to mutate into huge monsters that soon kill off (um, devour) most of humanity.
The United States’ few survivors have holed up in underground bunker “colonies” spread throughout the country, which maintain contact with each other via short wave radio. Joel (O’Brien), belonging to one such colony, is something of a misfit. Everybody is kind — they love his minestrone (!) — but he feels useless.
He isn’t strong or brave enough to join his older comrades when they go topside to forage for supplies, a dangerous endeavor that often has tragic consequences.
Worse yet, he’s the colony’s only singleton; everybody else has paired off. He nurses the memory of his former girlfriend, Aimee (Jessica Henwick), whom he hasn’t seen since they were separated seven years earlier, during the evacuation of Fairfield. He knows where she is — another colony, 85 miles away, on the California coast — but that doesn’t help much.
When his colony is breached by a giant ant, with disastrous consequences, Joel decides he’d rather die trying to reunite with Aimee, than spend whatever remains of his life cowering in a hole. And so he grabs a crossbow and a backpack’s worth of supplies, and heads topside. Nobody tries to stop him; they all understand.
Needless to say, his quest proves quite hazardous.
