Seems like it wasn’t that long ago that the Syfy channel was a punching bag. What with their endless plethora of terrible monster movies and CGI-slathered creature features, many saw the channel that once hosted such classic programming as Mystery Science Theater 3000 as television’s answer to The Asylum. The tongue-in-cheek Sharknado franchise seemed to confirm Syfy’s new mission statement of making purposefully bad, deliberately cheesy shlock. But then something odd happened: they started making good shows again. The Killjoys, Wynonna Earp, and most notably The Expanse wowed both audiences and critics with their world-building, storytelling, and originality. The question now is whether or not their original movies will follow suit.
Dagen Merrill’s Atomica, while by no means a masterpiece, is at the very least an encouraging sign. The film takes place almost entirely within a single (admittedly large) set with a cast of only a handful of characters. Of them, only five have any lines and only three have any significant screen-time. Atomica feels like a conscious attempt to do more with less, a cinematic bottle episode relying more on tension and character than special effects. There are still the requisite whiz-bang props and gadgets to remind the audience that they are watching a science fiction movie, from little background details like hologram bedroom clocks to audacious spectacles of digitally rendered vomit like a globular airship where the two pilots have to sit back-to-back like they were manning a Rebel Alliance snowspeeder. But once the film gets going it becomes a story of a small group of people trapped in an isolated environment that could happen in any number of universes or timelines.
In the far-off year of 2025, mankind relies on a new generation of nuclear generators which power 99% of the planet. When one goes offline, safety inspector Abby Dixon (Sarah Habel) flies out to its location in the middle of an irradiated desert. She shortly meets one of the plant’s two workers: Robinson Scott (Dominic Monaghan). Untold years of continuous isolation have warped Robinson a bit, stripping him of ordinary societal and behavior norms. More than once Abby catches him watching her while she showers or takes a stripped-down UV bath, but we never get the sense there’s anything sexual about it. He’s been so long without human contact that he regards her like a bizarre insect trapped in a jar. But Abby doesn’t have much time to worry about Robinson. She has three distinct problems. First, despite state-of-the-art future technology, the plant is breaking down, risking a radiation leak that could further irradiate the countryside and wipe out a bordering community. Second, the communications equipment has broken down; she can’t contact the outside world for help or her employers for evacuation. And third, the other live-in employee is conspicuously missing.
The most impressive thing about Atomica is its setting. Filmed in an actual Cold War era Titan II missile silo, Merrill does her best to make the claustrophobic interiors seem spacious and vast. It creates this odd feeling that while flight from danger might be possible, it’s finite and ultimately futile. The passageways all end in the same rooms, the ladders to the same exits, the exits to the same inhospitable wasteland. Here is not the spot for a slasher film where individuals get picked off in the nooks and crannies of old houses and cramped hallways. It’s the perfect setting for drama, but not necessarily conflict. Appropriately, while there is what could be termed an action scene where two characters fight with laser knives, Atomica doesn’t end with a traditional action climax. In fact, it ends almost abruptly, all the plot threads tidily resolved in just a few jarring minutes. But I didn’t mind. The film is at its best when it’s pitting its confused, scared protagonists against each other, picking their pain and trauma for hidden motivations. Atomica isn’t the film Syfy needs to reinvent itself. But it gives me hope that somebody on their cinematic production line has begun to care.
Rating: 6/10
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