Main cast: Britt Lower (Phoenix), Ryan Merriman (Denver), William Gregory Lee (Boston), Sonja Sohn (Atlanta), Cedric Sanders (Chicago), Nick Gomez (Houston), and Kevin Sizemore (Orlando)
Director: Nathaniel Atcheson
The Saharan virus is ravaging the world, killing 30 million people in the space of a sneeze, and desperate measures are needed. Hence, 50,000 underground bunkers are built, each for one person, and the bunker is designed to be sterile, self-sustaining for up to 70 years, and powered by a generator that requires the person to do 30 minutes of exercise to provide the energy needed for it to run on that day. The inhabitants are picked by a lottery.
The person in each bunker is not allowed to interact with another human being. Social distancing, you know, is key to prevent transmission and all that. However, there is a network called Domain that allows one person to communicate over their screen with six other people from other bunkers, because research has found that interaction with seven people is optimal for sanity check or something like that.
Hence, in Domain, we focus on seven people, identified by the location of their bunkers. They are going along fine… except for Orlando, who is always causing problems with taunting remarks described by the others as “redneck”. Well, that fellow is located in Orlando, so I have a sneaking suspicion that “redneck” is an euphemism for a certain group of people that vote for an American political party that is frowned upon by folks on social media these days. Just like those folks on social media these days, these guys have the nerd of the crew, Denver, hack into Domain to ban Orlando from their social media platform… forever.
Just like how these folks on social media now turn on one another after they have successfully banned all the “wrong-thinkers” and hence have no one to channel their outrage addiction on, the remaining six will soon fracture and start to give one another the side-eye.
I watch this one because it’s either logical or insane to do so, what with what is happening in the world these days. The parallels are there, but I can only hope we don’t go as far as to isolate people individually in bunkers like in this movie. Can you imagine? No physical interaction, nothing to do in the bunker aside from talking to the same six people every day, and having to consume shakes for every meal. I think I’d rather die from the virus than to live like that for the rest of my life, seriously, as the boredom and the tedium will drive me insane soon enough so much so that life in that bunker will be akin to death in very slow motion.
Unfortunately, this movie introduces a third-rate M Night Shyamalan-ish twist in the late act that completely negates any interesting, thought-provoking elements that are present in the movie up to that point. Of course, back then the director-cum-screenwriter didn’t anticipate anything like COVID-19, and he may understandably believe that the pandemic premise is far-fetched compared to the twist. Well, unfortunately for him and this movie, the premise is far more compelling when this movie is watched in the present day, and the twist ends up setting the whole movie back considerably.
Without the twist, Domain could have been an interesting parable and cautionary tale of sorts. With the twist, however, it becomes a tale of unlikable people bickering with no good pay-off to make it worth my time. I still think this one is worth a look if one is in the mood to watch a pandemic-driven thriller during this time—well, some people are like that, ahem—but folks watching this should tamper their expectations and be prepared for the likelihood of being disappointed and even feeling cheated by the time the credit rolls.
