Humanity’s End, 2009.
Directed by Neil Johnson.
Starring Jay Laisne, Rochelle Vallese, Cynthia Ickes, William Tulin, Kari Nissena and Peta Johnson.
SYNOPSIS:
The last man in the universe is hunted down by a hybrid race known as the Nephilim.
As a self-considered feminist, this movie was almost like blasphemy. Not a good start at all. The premise is that the last human in the universe, a man, is being hunted down by the alien race that wiped our species into extinction. Along the way he rescues several doting women, including a “surrogate” who is carrying the sperm of the greatest men who ever lived. Awkward.
But I’ll get to those bits later. From the offset, it’s glaringly obvious that this space movie is a low-budget production. Nothing wrong with that, but I think the producers could maybe have spent more money on a decent writer than on poorly-integrated stock images of explosions and dodgy overlays of coloured bullets nicked from the original Star Wars trilogy. The setup is poor, and the plot arc is virtually non-existent. Our “hero” (I use the term loosely), is a promiscuous captain of the ship Blue Whale, Derasi Vorde, played by the ostentatious Jay Laisne.
The story basically centres around this pig’s promiscuity and his attempts to perform heroic acts of bravery whilst escaping from the clutches of the Nephilim and flirting with every female available. He is a poor parody of those he is trying attempting to replicate, like Chris Pine’s Kirk in the 2009 Star Trek. It may be ageist of me, but I’m afraid that Laisne lacks the youth and sex appeal to efficiently pull off this character, who even then is mediocre at best. His jokes are flat and two-dimensional and he swears profusely and needlessly.
The women are just as bad, if not worse. I think writer-director Neil Johnson thought up these characters after a wet dream. These pitiful excuses for women fawn over Laisne’s character and are attracted to his poor attempts at masculine charm. Alarmingly, we also have a robot (Rochelle Vallese) and the ship’s computer (Peta Johnson) falling for him, and getting narky when he ends up getting with the sperm bank (Cynthia Ickes). And of course, our unlikely hero saves the human race by impregnating the last female human in the universe before martyring himself to the hands of the Nephilim [spoiler alert – but if you were going to watch the film after this review I have serious concerns for your wellbeing], in one last attempt at the heroic saves-the-day male archetype, which again miserably falls flat on its face.
I also have concerns with Johnson’s thinking behind the “saving” of the human race. By my reckoning at the end of the movie the only two humans left in the universe are the sperm bank and her son, fathered by Derasi Vorde. After previously ascertaining that the other available woman is actually a robot and unable to conceive, we have to assume that with her catalogue of sperm, children will all come from the same mother, meaning that the future of the human race beyond this movie relies on some severe incest (yay). Apologies to Neil Johnson if I’ve got this wrong, but to be honest, your movie should have made it clearer to the audience that these kids won’t have to have sex with their siblings in order to prevent extinction. How incredibly crude.
These disturbing and slightly repulsive sexual overtones continue throughout the movie but for me, the character development was the deal breaker. These women essentially worship a total plank and are climbing over each other to have sex with him, despite his blatant lack of charm, sincerity, or any redeeming qualities. This is not how it works. For once, I would like to see some genuinely engaging and self-aware female characters, and if you insist on having a male hero archetype, please at least try and make him interesting and relatable. Johnson’s idea of a hero is beyond belief.
Or maybe I just don’t get it because I’m a girl. Either way, this movie was so horrendous it made me want to vomit.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film ★ / Movie ★
Kirsty Capes
