Last Sentinel: It could've been good if it made sense

One of my favorite genres of films is sci-fi. I also enjoy dystopian tales if they are done in an inventive and non-preachy way. Last Sentinel appeared as though it could have been both of these things but ended up getting bogged down in typical character arcs and the amount of twists that they introduced into the story made the whole thing too confusing to enjoy fully.

It's a shame because this rather low-budget film was shot extremely well and had some genuinely creepy moments in it but in the end I finished the film not really knowing what the hell happened and also not caring enough anymore to bother going back or even looking up what the story was meant to be.

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The story here, in a shell, is that the world in 2063 consists of only 2 small continents as the rest of the planet has been irrevocably flooded and for some reason our crew is out here on a stationary platform serving as some sort of undefined defense. Their weaponry is very limited, their equipment is run down and relies on diesel (no explanation as to how they are getting fuel since most of the world is underwater now) and they have a crew of a mere 4 people. The establishing shots of the rig they are on are quite awesome and it gives a real sense of danger. I thought that after the first ten minutes that this was going to be a very good film because the start of it is outstanding but this is before we actually have any idea what the people are doing out there.

Unfortunately for the next 40 minutes or so we are treated to a ton of dialogue, a love tryst, and petty and continual arguments among the 4 crew members. One of them in particular is painted as the bad guy with cabin fever from the start but we are supposed to always be guessing about who the real baddy is all the way through the film. When we do finally find out who the "bad guy" is, I guess we are surprised, but at that point they have changed directions in the film so many times that you no longer care and the 93 minutes of duration just seems to drag on and on.

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See that image above? Well that is a scene where one of the crew is sitting in front of gear that would be considered outdated by today's standards, let alone 2063 and there is a bunch of talking and more talking about things that don't have much bearing on the overall story. Get used to that because it is at least half of the overall film.

The tension is created in the film because their relief crew was meant to arrive 3 months ago and still hasn't. They spend all day doing god knows what as it isn't really well-established what they are even doing there. They maintain a hierarchy of command which is pretty silly when you consider that there are only 4 of them on the entire vessel. It's a micro-execution of "too many chiefs, not enough indians." The only person who doesn't seem to have any real authority is the person depicted above whose name is "Sullivan." He is your typical morally-driven good guy, who does what he is told even though he has his own ideas about what should be done.

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Hendrichs (pictured above) is played by a decent actor whose name eludes me (not famous) and he is another typical archetype that is in basically any military oriented film that has ever been created. He is a joyless and devoted soldier, and sticks to the military script of command even though after 3 months of not being contacted by your relief team, or your government in general, it seems to me as though a real leader might have been investigating at least the possibility that no one is coming to rescue you.

There's an engineer that loses his mind briefly, and a rather attractive woman on the rig as well. So I guess we have all the bases covered here.

They do a good job with environmental stuff and create a good sensation of being truly alone and this is impressive to me given their very limited budget and classification as an "Indie" film.

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That being said, there are only so many times you can take the rowboat out into the fog and surprisingly calm open ocean before it gets old.

Should I watch it?

For the most part I think the visuals make this film something you could turn on while you are cleaning your living room and glance up every now and then and kind of be in awe about how real they were able to make this all seem with such a small budget. Films of this nature make me feel that Hollywood is definitely doing some sort of money laundering since they spend 40x as much with basically the same visual result. Other than appreciating the ambiance created by good directing, this film is mostly just really boring though and by the time you get to the pinnacle of the action you will be very let down. I can't say to totally skip this because it does have some merits. For the most part though the lack of a real story or a conclusion and the length of time it takes to get to that point make this a mostly cumbersome watch. This entire story could have better been told in 12 minutes by a Love Death and Robots short film.

_{I nearly gave this a "stay away" rating so honestly, tread with caution}