"Here, director Luke Sparke angles downwards in his intro from a massacre in an office high-rise overlooking a devastated skyline, towards the ground zero of the action: the bottom of a crater where stricken civilian Mark (Jamie Costa) is pinned under a boulder. After freeing himself just before a rockfall that seals him into a tunnel, Mark encounters Kate (Emalia) also scrabbling around in the dark."
"Sparke shows some camera chops in conducting this crawlspace nightmare in a series of long takes, sometimes pulling back for poignant, Zippo-lit distance from the spelunkers. But the scenario, as written by Tom Evans, gives the film painfully little room for manoeuvre; there's lots of tedious wrangling over resources such as light and phone signals, and all-too-obvious false dawns for exit possibilities."
"And there's little sense of how the critters chitinous escapers from Starship Troopers act behaviourally, or how they fit into the bigger apocalyptic picture. One thing you have to admit is that the film is paced nicely for the experience of two people trapped in a tunnel; it's both somehow agonisingly underwritten and, with the antic camera and incessant score, strangely overblown."
Luke Sparke opens with a high-rise massacre and narrows the focus to a crater where Mark is pinned beneath a boulder and then trapped in a tunnel. Mark meets Kate, who holds him at gunpoint as they search for an exit amid chittering in the dark. The film employs long takes, Zippo-lit pullbacks and an active camera to create a crawlspace nightmare, but the scenario leaves little room for manoeuvre, producing tedious resource wrangling and obvious false dawns. Character revelations feel contrived, creature behaviour and their place in the apocalypse remain unclear, while pacing suits two trapped people and the leads get intensive performance work.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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