When someone says “ Australian skill fiction movie , ” thoughts directly and inevitably turn to Mad Max — if not George Miller ’s insanely influential 1979 original , then to any of the sequels that followed over the years , including the recent , justly extol Fury Road . But here ’s the thing : it was never just about Max .
The Road Warrior arose in a fertile period for Australian writing style cinema , when generous tax motivator saw vast quantity of money pour into the photographic film industry , result in hundreds of cheaply - get moving picture across the genre spectrum — action and repulsion for the most part , but with a thin scattering of scifi . Notably , the tax breaks meant that being profitable was not necessarily the name of the game — plainly having money in plastic film production was . The pragmatic end result was that a lot of absolute impurity was produce , but if you sow a big enough field with enough seeds , something interesting is break down to grow . ( The documentary Not Quite Hollywoodis an of the essence account of this weird golden charge full point in Australian film . )
Now , over 30 yr afterward , it ’s happening again . The economical drivers are slightly dissimilar this time . emergent distribution systems like subscription streaming and telecasting on demand have increased the need for low-priced original content , allow a new generation of genre film producer to deposit afford a door to the industry .
Horror remains the Australian niche genre of selection , cover everything from The Babadook to the ongoing Wolf Creek dealership , but over the past five age or so science fiction has increasingly had a braggart footprint . Crucially , the typically humbled budgets of Australian product entail these film ca n’t rely on CGI razzle - dazzle and action set pieces to get by ( although there are exceptions ) . No , these movies truck in the currency of ideas , conduct with everything from parallel macrocosm theory to pharmacological virtual reality , time change of location , and that most Australian of skill fiction figure of speech , the apocalypse .
Of course , many of these gem have flown under the radar . give the richness of content at our fingertip these days , a lot of moving picture can slip by even the most consecrate follower of musical style mode — it ’s hard enough to keep runway of every major American release , let alone a lot of cinematic oddities cooked up at the bottom of the existence . Here , then , is a survival of Australian scifi film from the past few years that are worth plugging into your sensorium .
Exit (2011)
In a nameless city , a disparate group of people have fall to trust that their urban surround is one giant maze equipped with only one exit — an loss they ’re desperate to find . Part rage and part support radical , they spend their days essay door after threshold and searching for hidden signs and meaning , hoping to one twenty-four hour period solve the brain-teaser of their own existence .
The first and only ( to escort ) feature film by manager Marek Polgar and screenwriter Martyn Pedlar , the oblique and paranoid Exit has drawn obvious compare to David Lynch , but it owes a large debt to Darren Aronofksy ’s debut feature , Pi — or perhaps it ’s a low primal riff on Alex Proyas ’ Dark City , minus the CGI kaleidoscope buildings and army of pale barefaced humans ? Whatever your take , outlet is a somber , sullen speculation on loneliness and alienation that forget a mark .
These Final Hours (2013)
The world is facing inevitable , imminent doom : An asteroid has bear upon in the North Atlantic and a devastating firestorm is deplume across the Earth , decimate all life in its itinerary . In the remote city of Perth , Western Australia , James ( Nathan Phillips ) must cut through the chaotic city to get to his Quaker ’s fast end - of - the - humanity political party , but is catch in an honourable conundrum when he encounters a vernal girl ( Angourie Rice of The Nice Guys and Spider - Man : Homecoming ) who has been separated from her family . Can he reunite the foundling with her family before the clock runs out ?
Writer - director Zak Hilditch of late made a bountiful splash with Netflix ’s Stephen King adaptation 1922 , but his considerable talents were already on display in this apocalyptic thriller . Faced with certain last , characters react in way that swan from dead desperation to vehement lawlessness to hedonistic abandon , but the moral choices salute are render all the more arrant against the looming extinction event . Jessica De Gouw ( Arrow , Underground ) , Daniel Henshall ( Ghost in the Shell , The Snowtown Murders ) , and Sarah Snook ( Predestination , Winchester ) round out the ensemble , but the actual star is Hilditch ’s unflinching portrayal of humanity facing up to its end .
The Infinite Man (2014)
A young military man ( Josh McConville ) just wants a perfect weekend getaway with his lady friend ( Hannah Marshall ) , but it all goes to hell when her oafish , genitive x - boyfriend ( Alex Dimitriades ) crashes their holiday at an give up beachside motel . What ’s the solution ? sentence travel , of path ! And he ’s go to keep try on over and over again until he gravel it right .
There are low budget , there are micro - budget , there are shoestring budgets , and there ’s The Infinite Man , whose only assets are a few actors , a borrowed location , and a repletion of cool melodic theme . Playing out like a cross between Primer and Groundhog Day , Hugh Sullivan ’s film manages to keep all its sentence loop-the-loop and displaced duplicates directly even if the audience ca n’t . It ’s a bravura case of doing everything you could with the resource at deal — a clever , odd , voguish narrative of thwarted making love wrapped in delightfully lo - fi scifi skin .
Predestination (2014)
Twin brothers Michael and Peter Spierig are best known for their horror employment ; their last film was Jigsaw , a soft reboot of the gory Saw franchise , while their next , the forthcoming Winchester , is a fictionalize sashay into the most famous preoccupied house in the world , theWinchester Mystery House . Still , their work has often toyed with scifi tropes . Their introduction feature film , 2003 ’s over - the - top romp Undead , injected aliens into the zombie action , while their lamia larger-than-life Daybreakers tried — and mostly follow — to present a plausible vampire smart set that echo but did n’t mime Richard Matheson ’s seminal and much - shoot novel , I Am Legend .
Predestination remains their only arrant science fiction crusade to date . Based on the Robert Heinlein inadequate story “ — All You Zombies — ” , the photographic film meet a sentence - traveling underground agent ( Ethan Hawke ) trying to track down a terrorist dub the “ Fizzle Bomber ” in 1975 New York . Along the room he recruits a newfangled agent , John , and from there thing get very twisty . foreordination retains the convoluted but robust clock time travel machinations of Heinlein ’s original story but double down on the pathos , becoming a labyrinthine mystery that is also a mediation on love , identity , and destiny .
The Rover (2014)
What if Mad Max was really , really depressing ? We ca n’t say for trusted that was the inciting recollect that run director David Michôd to accompany up his bossy feature debut , Animal Kingdom , with this harrowing road motion picture , but it seems like a safe bet .
In a crumbling near - future that is , as mentioned , evocative of Mad Max ’s pre - apocalyptical setting , drifter Eric ( Guy Pearce ) teams up with criminal Rey ( Robert Pattinson ) to track down his slip railcar , taken by the same reprehensible gang that abandoned Rey . That sound like a formula for a sidekick comedy , but The Rover is anything but , depicting a bleak outback populace on the brink of total collapse , where military units protect minelaying interest while the civilian world devolve to savage savagery . The Rover would make a practiced double characteristic with fellow Aussie John Hillcoat ’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy ’s The Road … if your estimate of a good meter is numb desperation .
Arrowhead (2016)
Otherwise known by the less remindful deed of conveyance Alien Arrival , Arrowhead see Kye ( Dan Mor ) , a prisoner of warfare after an interplanetary conflict , rescue from a mining camp and offered the opportunity to rescue his father from carrying out . When things go awry he winds up stranded on a desert moonshine along with his ship ’s computer , download into a mobile automaton flesh , and a biologist named Tarren ( Aleisha Rose ) , for company .
riffle on the Twilight Zone instalment “ I Shot an Arrow Into the Air , ” Arrowhead is a substantial DIY effort that start out life as a poor film before being expanded into a feature film . The pic changes things up repeatedly ; what set forth as a scifi Isle of Man - on - a - delegacy pic becomes a survival taradiddle , before taking a left turn into closed book and body repugnance when an alien biologic terror is introduced lately in the biz . That ’s both a strength and a financial obligation , demonstrating an admiral breadth of imagination while at the same metre never fully developing any one set of ideas presented along the room .
All else aside , astute , evocative motion-picture photography and production design carry the day , and it ’ll be interesting to see what writer and theatre director Jesse O’Brien can do down the track with ( hopefully ) more resources at his disposition .
The Death and Life of Otto Bloom (2016)
Shot and cut in a mockumentary style , Cris Jones ’ film tells the story of the titulary oddity ( Xavier Samuel of the Twilight saga and Fury ) , a piece who have time in reverse , remembering the future but completely unable to think the past . Thus , as he ages , he knows less about the cosmos , but his knowledge of the future makes him a messianic cult physique . The film uses mock archival footage , newsprint clippings , and speak drumhead consultation to good effect , but our substantial point of ingress is Dr. Ada Fitzgerald , played by female parent - and - girl actress Rachel Ward and Matilda Brown , the brain doctor whose captivation with Bloom ’s shape turn to erotic love .
A confident , intelligent and moving flick , The Death and Life of Otto Bloom marked the unveiling of a singular endowment . regrettably , writer and director Jones unexpectedly passed away last year at the old age of 37 , leaving this as his only feature .
The Gateway (2018)
Jacqueline McKenzie ( Deep Blue Sea , The 4400 ) is Jane Chandler , a force particle investigator whose probe into matter teleportation — a light nod to The Fly , albeit with less Baroque era - looking telepods — unexpectedly unlock a means to go to parallel dimensions . After her hubby ( Myles Pollard , X - humanity Origins : Wolverine ) is bolt down in a traffic chance event , the grief - stricken Chandler contribute back a alternate from another world . But each world is different in some way , and the human beings she add back may not be as trusty as the man she lose .
Writer and director John V. Soto ’s been on the genre beat for some time now ; his 2010 horror thriller Needle featured Travis Fimmel and Ben Mendelsohn , who seem to have done quite well for themselves of late . This , his first pure science fiction cinema , deals with some tropes that are fairly familiar to scifi fans , but the proceedings are cast anchor by a grounded , believable round from Mackenzie , who keeps us invested even when the plot of land machinations seem a minute too predictable .
The Osiris Child: Science Fiction Volume One (2016)
Director Shane Abbess has never been one to shy away from showing his influence . His first feature , the drear urban fantasy Gabriel , owe a large debt to The Crow , while his follow up , Infini , demonstrated his affection for James Cameron , specifically Aliens .
The Cameron influence is again clearly experience in the determinedly titled The Osiris baby : Science Fiction Volume One . Set on a dependency macrocosm in the not - too - distant future , Abbess ’s commendable plot low budget actioner sees Kane ( Daniel McPherson , soon to be seen in A Wrinkle in Time ) , a military contractile organ for shadowy mega - corporation Exor , team up with an escaped prisoner , Sy ( Kellan Lutz of the Twilight saga ) , to deliver the former ’s untested daughter before Exor nukes the site from orbit to get over up a bioweapons experiment gone unseasonable .
Reminiscent of some of the bolder abject budget science fiction / action flicks of the ‘ 80s ( remember Cherry 2000 ? ) The Osiris Child throws everything at the paries , and a set of it hold fast . We get a well - executed dogfight between eminent - tech flack planes , some effective rubber suit lusus naturae , an evocative location ( opal mining town Coober Pedy , which also swear out as the backdrop for Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and the 2000 Val Kilmer stinker Red Planet ) , and Temuera “ Jango Fett ” Morrison as a sadistic prison house warden . What ’s not to wish ? Hopefully Volume Two is n’t too far away .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qav2Z0TgYMA
OtherLife (2017)
base on the refreshing Solitaire by Kelley Eskridge , OtherLife sees Jessica De Gouw ( These Final Hours , Arrow ) as Ren Amari , a magnificent researcher at a biotech inauguration working on a variety of pharmaceutic virtual reality scheme that can be used to get naturalistic computer memory in a theme . Amari ’s motif stem from guilt feelings ; she wants to aid her buddy , rendered head dead by an accident and stick on liveliness support , to experience some color of a full life , possibly even cure him . by nature , her business mate see more commercial-grade applications — such as forcing prisoners to subjectively brave lengthy sentences—“hard meter without the time ” as one suit cracks . Naturally , betrayal , corporal malfeasance , and the blurring of the personal credit line between realities ensue .
Director Ben C. Lucas crafts a light , minimalist cyberpunk thriller that does a batch with a little , using carefully choose locations to show a sense of the skinny time to come rather than squander the clearly skimpy budget on expensive tableaux . De Gouw makes for a charismatic if somewhat prototypical biohacker paladin , all hoods , shapeless sweaters and freehanded boots , and if the plot convolution sometimes stretch out credulity past the breaking point , that ’s the risk you take when you follow in the step of Philip K. Dick and his acolyte .
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