Annus Horribilis

2067 (2020) is a low-budget time-travel film, that, like at least one character, makes every mistake. 

It is set in the year Eponymous. The world has gone to hell, with all plant life wiped out. That drastically reduces the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, so people have to use artificial oxygen. That's my first gripe. Artificial oxygen isn't and shouldn't be a thing. It's just a simple atom or two. But the artificial stuff is bad for you, and can give you the Sickness. This trope isn't stupid, but it isn't what I want right now.

It stars Kodi Smit-McPhee (the latest Nightcrawler) as a tunnel worker, maintaining the dangerous and clunky yet high-tech nuclear power system. I guess that's a trope I have no real problem with. He has a wife he dearly loves (Sana'a Shaik) who is coming down with the Sickness. 

Then he gets a call from ChronoCorp, the corporation that runs everything. From its name you might guess it has something to do with time travel, and you would be right. But so far, they have only sent something into the future, and that was when Kodi was a kid. Not much to base a corporate empire on.

Kodi has a grudge against time travel and his dad. You see, he used to love his scientist father - he wanted to grow up to be a "science man". Then one day, his father came home, and locked a bracelet on his wrist, one that drew blood and had a red LED. Then his father disappeared for a while, then called his mother to meet him somewhere dodgy, leading her to get killed (we don't learn this all at once). Well done, science man.

It turned out his father went forward in time with the upstream time machine, which then failed. He might have been a rotten father, but wasn't very good at science either? But now, with Kodi all grown up, the time machine in 2067 receives a message, saying "Send Ethan Whyte", Kodi's character. 

Kodi is completely against this, wanting to stay with his sick wife, not abandon her like his dad. But she convinces him to go into the future and send back a cure. Of course everyone assumes there is a cure in the future, not like, some new plants or something.

And when he gets to the future, he finds a lush jungle, but everyone is dead. There's so much oxygen that all his equipment burns up. (Nice touch, I'll grant that.) In short order, he poisons himself on mushrooms, and his buddy Ryan Kwanten pops out of the time machine to save him. The time machine that could only send ONE person. So they just changed their story - it could only send two people.

Anyway, is he here to help Kodi? Kodi has found a skeleton of himself with a bullet through the skull, and Kwanten has the only gun. But wait, how did they get into the past for Kodi to get shot? Never mind.

As you can tell, I was kind of annoyed by this movie. The design was good - director Seth Larney did visual effects for a Matrix sequel and an X-Men movie. The acting was fine, although it gets a little fraught in the climactic crazy scenes. But the plot is just all over the place. The whole father thing, the artificial oxygen, the clunky time travel, just a mess. At least it looked good.