Population 2 (2012)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Overrated

Highly Overrated But Still Good

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

In the near future, the Omni Tech Corporation develops an expensive shield to protect Earth from the global warming. However the project fails and all the inhabitants die. In Portland, Oregon, Lilith (Suzanne Tufan) is the only survivor. While she scavenges supplies on the wasteland, she recalls her middle-class life with her husband Simon Prime (Jon Ashley Hall) before the Apocalypse."Population: 2" is a depressive, boring and messy sci-fi. The plot is confused from the title and there are many unanswered questions. Why population 2 if there is only one survivor? Why Lilith has survived the Apocalipse? Who are the pilot and the guy in the control tower and what is the objective of the flight? Did Simon give a Pandora pill to Lilith in her glass of wine? Is that why he committed suicide? Where are the habitats where the Omni Tech Corporation executives have protected themselves? My vote is three.Title (Brazil): "A Sobrevivente" ("The Survivor")

Can I give it negative stars? I'm certainly glad to hear about the struggles that Gil Luna and Jonathan Stark had making this movie. But let me tell you about the struggles I had staying awake. It starts out slow and goes down hill from there. And if you get excited about hearing a couple of fighter pilots babble endlessly between themselves, while they fly along and we watch graphics that look like a flight sim from 10 years ago....this is for you. Why that's even in the movie, I don't know. Doesn't add anything to the movie at all. And that's saying something. I found myself wishing the only survivors would just give it up and die, then it would be over.

I was looking forward to watching this movie. I'm a die hard dystopian/apocalyptic fan, whether that be movies or books, and love a sole survivor style situation; so this should have fit the bill perfectly for me. Now the plot line and the cinematography is good. Most scenes are fairly well shot and the story - although it flits from scene to scene and back and forth between the present and past - is easy enough to follow and blends in quite nicely. Some of the darker apocalyptic scenes are shot very well and show Lilith (Suzanne Tufan) struggling to survive and walking through the apocalyptic wasteland, and bedding down in her basement at night.Suzanne Tufan plays a decent role whilst also narrating many of the scenes well too. But there are one or two that let the whole game down. Well, mainly one, and that's her on-screen husband. It's been a long time since I've wanted to put my fist inside of the TV and punch someone just for the role they play. And I don't mean because of the person he portrays, but because of the way he acted it out. It's like watching Joey from friends when he acts as Dr. Drake Ramoray in 'Days of our Lives'. Just awful.

"Population: 2" centers on a woman named Lillith, the only survivor of an ecological disaster that wipes out life as we know it on Earth. We see her past as a series of flashbacks that gradually come to explain how she ended up wandering alone through the tattered ruins of Portland, Oregon. Suzanne Tufan steals the show in her challenging dual-role as Lillith, a woman who is broken in two by tragedy. Before the disaster, Lillith is happy, bright and hopeful. Afterwards she is broken, haunted and struggling to maintain her sanity. As we delve into Lillith's past, we find that the ecological disaster was in part caused by the money-grubbing tactics of a Corporation called OmniTech, whose irresponsible use of "solar shield" technology to deflect the sun's rays and cool the earth backfired disastrously, causing a global meltdown. The evil empire is headed by the villainous Vincent Velo (Shelly Lipkin), who (before the disaster) employs Lillith's husband Simon (Jon Ashley Hall) as his media mouthpiece. Expecting special treatment for his years of service to OmniTech, Simon asks Vincent to ensure space for his family in "habitats" that OmniTech is setting up to help it's most important employees survive the disaster. Vincent tells Simon that he can only offer him one habitat, stocked with enough resources for one person. In an unfortunate twist, this all happens right around the time Lillith discovers she's pregnant.Now we arrive at the point in our story that the writer has been guiding us towards all along: an ultimatum. Early on the film establishes the existence of an over-the-counter abortion pill called "Pandora" (brought to you by OmniTech!). The "Pandora" commercial features a golden-curled young woman dancing in a sea of flowers as a soothing voice-over instructs us that "A pregnancy can sometimes come at the wrong time in your life." When spineless Simon learns of his wife's pregnancy, he takes matters into his own hands and forces his wife to abort by slipping a Pandora tablet into her drink without her knowledge. By the time we arrive at this wildly contrived moment of choice, we have already suspected for some time that this would be a pro-life flick.Or is it? The politics are quite muddled in "Population: 2". Simon takes away Lillith's right of choice by forcing her to abort, and kills himself out of guilt. How would this exchange have played out differently if Lillith were the one who wanted to abort and Simon had tried to stop her? Does the fact that Simon's choice ultimately saved Lillith's life mitigate his crime? And what does all of this have to do with the environment, corporations and the threat of destructive technology? And why the recurring religious themes? Where is "God" in this movie?Technically, "Population: 2" is one of the more impressive local features I've seen. The photography is solid, capturing some surprisingly haunting images of loss and destruction. The editing is a little uneven, and like many independent films relies too heavily on digital filters and color-correction. Overall the special effects were serviceable and managed to breath some authenticity into the filmmaker's vision of post-apocalyptic Portland. I think the strongest scenes in "Population: 2" are when Lillith is alone in the ruins of Portland. Tufan's nuanced performance is really what makes this film work, and other actors and dialogue and preachy political ideologies seem to only get in the way.