Movie Review - Bible Based: Last Survivors

This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.

A Woman's Touch

Plot Overview

green pepper A small town girl Henrietta (Alicia Silverstone) married her smart ass husband Andy (Benjamin Arthur) when they were both overly young. For economic reasons he moved them to the city, which she found stifling, so she moved herself to the outskirts of “Bumfuck, Nowhere” in hopes of finding some balance close to nature. She's living at the “Old Hobby Farm,” which is connected to the mains; she has all the modern conveniences. To connect with nature she raises chilies in a hothouse tricking them into believing they're in a warm, comfortable climate. She has yet to find balance in nature, but she makes a great soup.

mischievous boy w/sling Troy Delstair grew up on the mean streets of Chicago where he had to join a gang for survival. He's a dyed-in-the-wool atheist who married a rebellious church girl. When they had a son Jakey, their paternal and maternal instincts kicked in, and Troy became a prepper and his wife a believer. When the kid's fifth Christmas rolled around, they were inundated with well-meaning relatives who exacerbated the situation. Troy (“This is not a democracy”) violently kidnapped Jake (“DON'T TAKE HIM!”) and settled in the woods far from civilization. He's made up a narrative of WW III to account for his murderous distrust of “outsiders,” and they've been living off the grid twenty years now. When Troy (Stephen Moyer) goes to ambush an unlucky huntsman (Simon Lees) who'd strayed onto their turf, the cautious hunter shoots back. Troy, wounded, sends his son Jake (Drew Van Acker) to retrieve some needed meds from a cache buried near the Old Hobby Farm. There Jake (25) spots Henrietta outside and is in a quandary whether to pick her up or pick her off.

Ideology

Our two recluses remind us of an obscure biblical character Agur, what with the one's lack of faith and the other's stunted social growth, (Prov. 30:2-3) “Surely I am more brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man. I neither learned wisdom, nor have the knowledge of the holy.” Nevertheless, even he has something worth saying, (Prov. 30:15-16) “The horseleach hath two daughters, crying, Give, give. There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, four things say not, It is enough: The grave; and the barren womb; the earth that is not filled with water; and the fire that saith not, It is enough.” The two neediest creatures on earth (“Give, give”) are the helpless infant and the feeble geezer.

baby tombstone Troy is on an inexorable march to the grave always open to receive one more occupant. His wound won't heal without meds, he loses a foot race with younger Jake (“Need a hand, old man?”) and Jake speculates, “What if you die, Dad? I need to be able to finish what we started … have a family.” The hunter has a daughter at home (“Tell my daughter that I love her”) to provide for, which is why he was out hunting game; he was patently too sick to go in to work that day.

plowing We don't inhabit a water world, “the earth … is not filled with water.” Jake's grime came off in the shower and his clothes dried overnight. Jake was able to draw a cross on a (dry) table (“Why are you drawing that?”) and we can scratch the earth to grow crops, too. We can even start fires to cook the food grown. Jake shows Henrietta how to start one with a wooden hand drill (“Yellow cedar shavings will light a fire even when it's raining hard.”)

“The fire that saith not, It is enough” is human metabolism, which must be fed on a near daily basis to keep it going. When Jake decided to spice up the soup with chilies, Troy castigated him, saying: “We eat to live; we don't live to eat.” Their chilies were for to keep the vermin out of the garden. But he did enjoy the soup.

self-actualization

esteem

love and belonging

safety

survival

Maslow's Needs Hierarchy

The psychologist Abraham Maslow's analysis of human needs suggests that many needs of varying importance motivate human behavior. Describing the needs as a hierarchy, Maslow argues that the need actually motivating behavior in any situation depends on whether or not needs lower in the hierarchy are satisfied.
Survival... At the base of the hierarchy are survival needs. To survive, certain basic physiological needs must be satisfied. These include shelter, food, water, air, reproduction—all the requirements necessary to sustain life. The need to maintain a constant internal environment provides some of our most basic, though often unnoticed, motivations. Survival motivations underlie many other needs and under most conditions must be satisfied before other needs will motivate. (35–46)

fishing Troy and Jake were so busy with the basics that they had little time for anything else. Henrietta with her monthly alimony check & hot house peppers was doing a little better. The down-to-earth duo stored vegetables in jars in a root cellar and meat as jerky. The lady put leftover soup in a bowl that she covered with Glad Wrap and put in the fridge. Troy disparaged “ready to go” food in supermarkets. Plastic wrap is a petroleum derivative. They had neighbors within a seventy mile radius who were rousters working on oil rigs. They'd be paid ultimately from the proceeds of sales of plastics. Henrietta came “all the way up here” to get away from “people and money-making.” Okay. To find balance, she might look to the boy next door or read in a Don Winslow novel of a fellow:

majoring in business economics, and all he really learned about economics was that a cheap condom can be far more expensive than a good one. When he told his father that Karin was embarazada, Ricardo told him he was going to do the right thing.
Ric knew what that was: get rid of the thing and break up with Karin.

“No,” Núñez said. “You're going to get married and raise your child.”

Ric Sr. thought the responsibility of having a family would “make a man” out of his son. It sort of did—it made a man who rarely came home and had a mistress who would do everything his wife wouldn't. —

His father was unsympathetic. … “You chose to have sex with her,” Núñez said. “Without adequate protection.”

“Once,” Ric said. “I don't have to worry about sex with her much now.”

“Have a mistress,” Núñez said. “A man does that. But a man takes care of his family.” (70)

I don't suppose an old rubber removed from the pocket of some corpse's trousers years ago would be in the best of shape … if Jake would even think to use it. Should Henrietta find herself in the family way, that wouldn't recommend her to the judge administering child custody in her prior divorce, either. And as for Troy's in-law problems, now he would be the problem, and on a war footing at that. But there would be a lot of balance in this tale, albeit Twilight Zone apocalyptic.

Production Values

“” (2021) was directed by Drew Mylrea. It was written by Josh Janowicz. It stars Drew Van Acker, Alicia Silverstone and Stephen Moyer. Silverstone did a righteous job as an older woman. Van Acker was a hunk who looked good with his shirt off. His character was bedazzled by modernity. To him it would all seem futuristic, which is why the film can be classified sci-fi. It's not rated but shows (fully clothed) women in a found magazine—a big thrill for Jake and good for target practice. It was filmed in Butte, Montana, USA. It runs 1 hour 38 minutes.

Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation

It could easily seem that the central female character could have just taken quiet walks and raised a victory garden to achieve the same effect as moving far away from the city to maintain a hot house and run frequent trips into town. But sometimes a person just has to find herself. The hippies showed us that. I think the drama would have played out better in a book giving us time to fill in the blanks. In a movie we have to be quick on the uptake. The sci-fi was anachronistic, the drama was subtle, and the thrills first rate. I appreciate a wide variety of movies, and this one is no exception. However, it won't be for everybody.

Movie Ratings

Action factor: Edge of your seat action. Suitability for children: Not rated. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Good Date Movie. Suspense: Don't watch this movie alone. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.