My quick rating – 2.9/10. I have had this Scorched Earth flick sitting in my drafts for years, hoping it would eventually get some sort of proper streaming release. At this point, I’m finally giving up and publishing the bloody thing. LOL.
This independent, micro-budget UK feature caught my attention tonight mainly because of its 63-minute runtime. That’s a pretty easy commitment when you’re wondering whether you’ve just found another obscure post-apocalyptic gem or three hours of your life you’re never getting back. Thankfully, this one is only an hour.
Scorched Earth is a dystopian thriller set in a post-apocalyptic world where the water supply has become radioactive and deadly. It’s actually a pretty damn good premise. Water is obviously kind of important when you’re trying to keep humanity alive, so turning the world’s most basic resource into a death sentence gives the filmmakers plenty to work with.
Unfortunately, the movie never really does anything with it.
The story follows Gylian (Charlotte Elizzabeth Langley), a mother desperately trying to obtain medication for her sick daughter. Her motivation gives the movie a solid reason to explore this ruined world, but the story itself feels disjointed and never does anything with the characters to make me give a shit about what happens to them.
The extremely limited budget is also hard to hide. While I have no problem watching micro-budget films when the directors have found a way around their constraints, Scorched Earth is more like a film-school experiment than a primetime movie. The film’s editing is very disjointed. The pace of the story is uneven, and the special effects are not convincing enough for a believable post-apocalyptic setting.
The pacing is probably the biggest problem. It somehow feels both hurried and sluggish at the same time. There are scenes that go on and on but do not contribute anything, while other aspects occur too quickly for any effect. This makes it hard to create the level of tension and desperation required for a world where safe drinking water could mean the difference between life and death.
There are certainly glimpses of an interesting movie here. The central idea is genuinely good, and I can see what the filmmakers were trying to achieve. A mother fighting to save her sick daughter in a world where clean water no longer exists could have made for a pretty grim little survival thriller.
Sadly, the execution just isn’t there.
Another reason this review has been sitting in my drafts for so bloody long is that Scorched Earth never seemed to get mainstream distribution in the US or Australia. It has an official trailer on the Scorched Earth IMDb page, and there is an Amazon UK listing, but it never became one of those movies you could simply stumble across on Netflix or the usual Australian streaming services.
After waiting years for that to change, I’ve finally decided it isn’t going to.
Not sure how else to say it. The idea deserved a better movie. But Scorched Earth can’t overcome its production limits, uneven pacing, and underdeveloped characters. Unless you’re trying to find obscure micro-budget post-apocalyptic movies, I wouldn’t bother tracking this one down.
At least it only took 63 minutes. And now, after all these years, I can finally get the damn thing out of my drafts.
