If you have managed to find your way to this review then you already know that this film is not really a film, it is more of a indie production tied to Netflix, intended for a series, possibly orphaned, maybe not, no one knows as this review is penned.
It is hard to review "orphaned" pilots which dead-end. That is a given.
That said, I liked it.
I liked it because it belongs to what I consider the "dirty" sci-fi genre, that is, sci fi produced on such a barebones budget that all the money goes into the human elements while the sets (even in the Earth that never experienced the nuke!) look like they need Molly Maid.
In "dirty" sci fi, the actors are unknowns (which by no means suggests that they are bad) and the FX are minimal, and every now and then you get a scene where you swear that someone ad-libbed a line and they left it in anyway because that was cheaper than re-shooting.
Again, I liked it. It is a refreshing change from the "perfection" you tend to see these days in mainstream TV sci-fi, especially the stuff from Canada, where (they say) getting the lighting wrong when setting a scene is a hanging crime.
In many ways it reminds me of the British series Utopia (not the US knockoff) where interesting characters and good performances drove the show.
Watching, I made a mental note to myself that, if I ever end up in a hub to parallel universes, I would welcome a cute Asian chick popping out of a closet, with a lot of 'tude, and who generally acts like she read the script to the end and already knows how things are supposed to turn out.
Just sayin.
