Main cast: Iwan Rheon (SUM1), André M Hennicke (MAC), Rainer Werner (VAX7), and Norman Reedus (KER4)
Director: Christian Pasquariello
Alien Invasion: S.U.M.1 is the result of people that think they are being so much smarter than they really are. Just look at the names alone! Why would any military organization deliberately gives its operative a codename like SUM1? Then there is the program that supervises SUM1’s day to day activities being called KER4, how deep.
It’s as if screenwriter and director Christian Pasquariello just read up the meaning of pretentious twattery and decided hey, he could do that too and went ahead to make this movie.
Set in a post-apocalyptic world, this one is about Earth being invaded by savage aliens called Nonsuch. Now, the existence of these aliens is called into question, so I suppose once again Mr Pasquariello must have thought he was being so deep and smart by coming up with that name for the aliens. However, if the aliens were real, why would anyone call them Nonsuch in the first place?
The same “I think I am very smart!” vibes permeate the rest of the movie, and predictably enough, it isn’t very smart. It’s, in fact, very dumb.
Now, I can’t go on as to why this movie is dumb without revealing some major spoilers, so stop reading and hit the back button now if you don’t want to be spoiled.
Still here? Well, you’ve been warned, so you’re on your own now.
Anyway, the aliens had been for a while now… or are they? This is what SUM1 starts to wonder as he is sent to man the outpost called Cerberus (ooh, deep). Days pass, and nothing much happens. He befriends a rat. He gets a cigarette every day. It’s… boring.
An idle mind is the devil’s playground, they say, and indeed, eventually SUM1 starts to wonder why the person before him, VAX7, was evacuated. He starts to suspect that maybe VAX7 met a sinister end instead.
Weird things happen, but each time he reports them to his superiors, he is reassured that everything is fine, he should just do his thing and don’t worry about anything. What is happening here?
This is a super slow movie, but the problem is that it doesn’t have anything smart to say in order to warrant being this slow. As things unravel and SUM1 starts becoming more paranoid as he uncovers what seems like a giant conspiracy of some sort, things actually break down because nothing makes sense.
A big what on earth here is that Cerberus is supposed to be an outpost for refugees from the outside to come and find safety. Yet, he is barely armed, the place seems poorly equipped to accommodate even one person, and worst of all, he has to get an implant that prevents him from traveling too far from Outpost. How does the last one, especially, make sense, considering that whoever mans Outpost will need to help folks fleeing from Nonsuch? He won’t be able to help anyone that is in trouble outside of the distance permitted by the implant!
Of course, you may argue that this is likely all a conspiracy, but in light of the “twist”, no, there is no conspiracy here. The Nonsuch aliens do exist, as SUM1 finds out after making one too many fatal mistakes, so the entire setup makes no sense.
The military has no reason to keep their operatives in the dark about crucial details, especially when there is a precedence in VAX7. The fact that the whole setup lasts this long is a miracle, as it doesn’t take much and long for SUM1 to have a mental breakdown.
The whole thing makes sense had this whole setup is some kind of psychological test for the soldiers, but no, the director and screenwriter wanted a “twist”, so he decided to let the Nonsuch be real after all. As a result, this movie is dumb, dumb, and dumb personified.
Nothing here makes sense, thus proving that pretentious twattery should be left to professionals, not amateurs. Christian Pasquariello barely qualifies as an amateur with this script of his.
Oh well. Ramsay Bolton is easy on the eyes, though.
