I was looking forward to seeing this one – I was previously acquainted with the duo’s previous debut feature Aniara, which was an interesting take on the 2001: A Space Odyssey sci-fi journey formula. Not totally inventing the wheel or anything, but it is one of the more notable science fiction films of that decade. Simultaneously very nihilistic and brutal in its depiction of loneliness and being stranded in space with a rather poignantly existential ending pointing towards the next “evolution” of humanity, so to speak.

During the introduction to the screening that I attended (which was the premiere at TIFF), the filmmakers told the audience directly that “you are allowed to laugh”. I never thought much of that comment at first, but then I realized later on that was the warning sign that there might be trouble ahead – after all, why would a director of their own movie want to say that to you directly? Should a director not have confidence in their own work, that it should be able to speak for itself? If you want people to laugh, the movie should compel people to do so.

I will say that this movie has a lot of ideas which I will have to spoil here. Our lead protagonist Sonja is a journalist; we open with a subplot where she has to navigate through a workplace where the men call the shots in the business. Apparently, this section of the movie was based on director Pella Kagerman’s own experiences working for Vice Magazine. There is some compelling tension here between Sonja and the men she has to work with, including her boss (played by Tyler Labine) whose main character quirk is to drop the f-bomb every 20 seconds whenever he gets the chance to do so. A lot of 2000s indie sleaze as well with the drugs, sex and the rock n’ roll soundtrack that dominates much of this film.

We also get some weird dreams – or nightmares, so to speak – whereby Sonja has premonitions of nuclear doomsday. The dream sequences don’t look that great – the CGI and set pieces look pretty cheap, and having her wear the golden knight in shining armor alongside the random statues gave me pretty strong Megalopolis vibes in terms of the mix of grandiosity with bad looking special effects and production design.

But these moments do segway into what I guess is most of the movie’s focus: the exploration of a nuclear wasteland. We follow Sonja and the ragtag team of so-called journalists in search of centaurs at the site. They spend much time in the zone to no avail. It is through this process that we come to realize eventually: there is no radiation, so perhaps nothing has really happened here and what was fed to them was lies and propaganda. And that there probably are no centaurs. Eventually however, after eating a cactus and being ditched behind by the rest of the gang, Sonja encounters a centaur and engages in a make-out session with them shortly after. This moment should feel pretty exciting given the description, but much of the film up to this point has felt like a dull slogfest of characters wandering around aimlessly out of their wit’s end or waiting for something to happen, with the occasional verbal fight that only feels tedious in its inability to garner anything substantive or to even conjure up any laughs, if those dialogue exchanges were meant to be funny at all.

There is another subplot involving a brilliant author whom Sonja is related to by blood (her uncle), and we later come to realize that one of the people working in the laboratory beside the radiation zone they were visiting is actually the uncle who has been alive all along. His brain, transplanted into the head of a lady. By the end, Sonja manages to outsmart the laboratory and her escorts by implanting her own brain into the head of her boss. Maybe then she can finally be taken seriously as a journalist without the usual sexist prejudices levied against women in the industry. She can finally be her own boss.

It’s got some very good ideas, but ultimately a lot of this was just a hodge-podge of stuff that borders on lacking any topical focus. Very messy in execution – even the thrills aren’t quite that thrilling, and much of the journey was just dull along the way, like a Mad Max: Fury Road without the fury or the madness. For a film that is meant to be funny and comedic, you could tell a lot of the audience wasn’t feeling it besides a few chuckles here and there. Which, for a film audience that is as enthusiastic as TIFF moviegoers, is not a good sign. A swing and a miss.