CinemaSerf

May 15, 2024

6.0

No pun intended, but this is a really dry drama that assembles a decent enough cast but struggles with a really thin story. Climate change has played havoc with the water supply and so a sort of bartering arrangement has evolved between those who control the piped distribution and those who need to drink! Farmer "Ernest" (Michael Shannon) and his family are still trying to make a go of things amongst an environment of extortion and banditry - but he has one advantage. A machine that can do much of the manual work for them and one that proves useful when it comes to trading for water. Daughter "Mary" (Elle Fanning) has a boyfriend "Clem" (Nicholas Hoult) whom her father neither likes nor trusts, and when an accident occurs on a trip the two men take into the mountains, the young son "Jerome" (Kodi Smit-McPhee) gradually begins to smell a rat. With "Clem" now married to his sister, though, it is tough for "Jerome" to take his revenge. It's all perfectly adequate this in a sort of "Mad Max" light fashion, but there is little by way of characterisation and neither Hoult nor Smit-McPhee have very much to work with as the glaring sun and environmental challenges ram home much more of the message here the any of the writing does. It's adequately enough produced and edited but is really little better than afternoon television fodder that you'll quickly forget - even if you were in it.