Whenever I am unable to get to the cinema to watch a new film I turn to Netflix to provide me with content to review. This has led to a pretty mixed bag so far, with the films I have watched ranging from very good, to less than mediocre, which has left me a little sceptical of Netflix films. IO (2019) has done nothing to renew my optimism. This film is not necessarily even all that bad, at last on a technical and visual level. However, it bored me to tears and i would be extremely surprised if I watched a film more boring for the entirety of the rest of the year. The film takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth where, due to humans treatment of our planet, the air has become unbreathable and no life is possible. This has led to all of the remaining population escaping to IO, one of the moons of Jupiter. Everyone, that is, except for Sam (Margaret Qualley), a scientist who has found a pocket of breathable air on top of a mountain where she is conducting experiments to see if their is a chance of life to continue on Earth. She is not the only survivor though as she is joined by Micah (Anthony Mackie), arriving by hot air balloon, who has come in search of Sam's father, Henry (Danny Huston). Once he learns that Henry is dead he makes a plan to get Sam and himself to the launching sight so they may take the final shuttle to IO. This is the basic plot. This is all explained within about 30 minutes of the film. Nothing else happens. Honestly.
Before I start well and truly shitting on this film I will make attempts to say something positive. The film looks nice. Especially the scenes where they are in the fully rundown and unbreathable parts. It may look like every other post apocalyptic film ever made, with rusty vehicles and buildings overgrown with plant life, but it still looks nice none the less. It is also shot competently. There is never anytime where I thought it looked particularity bad or I felt that the film-making itself was shoddy. It directed well, composed well and has good lighting and visuals. Anthony Mackie also puts in an okay performance,. Again, its nothing special, but he holds himself well and is the best part of the film. Danny Huston is also fine in the film for the very little time he has on screen, and I mean very little time, less than five minutes worth of time. All of this was achieved on what feels like a very limited budget and so that is also commendable. Oh, and its only 96 minutes long which is the biggest plus of the lot. Now, on to the stuff which drags this film down.
The film has a huge cast of 3peaople. I have already mentioned the very fine performances that Mackie and Huston put in, but the same cannot be said for Margaret Qualley,the film's lead. She puts in an extremely bland, monotone performance and is partially to blame for the entire boring feel of the film. She is the lead character, and yet she is completely forgettable and endlessly dull. And its not as though the character gave her nothing to work with in her performance, its just a weak portrayal of the character. Adding this feeling of monotone blandness is the atmosphere of the film, in that there is none. The film constantly feels like it is trying to say something big and meaningful and give a sense of scope, but it fails to do so. It may just be that I wasn't smart enough to pick up on what it was trying to say, or the film wasn't clever enough to get them across in a con ise and interesting way, but either way it is a big problem the film suffers from. Although it is a quite genius bit of film-making giving the film no atmosphere in order to match the lack of atmosphere on earth. Truly genius. But the biggest negative of the film, the biggest underlying problem, is that nothing fucking happens. Honestly, just nothing. The whole film seems to be wanting to be about building a connection between Sam and Micah but all it does is lead to just boring nothingness. They chat about nothing, and do nothing while chatting about it. One of the biggest plot points of the film, and something that takes up most of the running time is the characters waiting for the wind to change direction and all the fun and exciting shenanigans that go along with that (which for those unaware is nothing, no shenanigans). I made a note of when the first real, interesting conflict arises, which is when Sam and Micah have to go into the unbreathable section in order to get helium for their balloon. This provides the first danger, the first challenge for our characters to overcome. They state how dangerous it is and how lucky they will be to survive. This is an hour into the film. An hour and ten minutes into the film the conflict is resolved and boring taking resumes. Fucking yippee.
IO is a very, very boring film. Despite the decent film-making and an okay performance or two, there is nothing that can overcome the just sheer lack of anything actually happening. I can kind of see what the film is trying to do though and why it wants to stand out from all the other post-apocalyptic films of which there is many. But in trying to stand out it has made itself completely forgettable, and even in the moments where it is half decent it doesn't stand out because it takes tropes and visuals from so many other post-apocalyptic worlds and plasters them on to itself. The film could be helped by just having some conflict, any conflict really, just to give the audience something to care about and attach to, because what we're given instead is a think piece which doesn't actually get across what it wants you to think about. Netflix had nearly lost all hope with me after this film, but the day I write this is also the day that the Oscar nominations were announced, and with Roman (2018) being nominated several times over my interest has peaked. Maybe Netflix can make some really good films and maybe I have just been unlucky to not see any as of yet. One thing I can definitely say though is this, I hope the next time I am unable to get to the cinema that Netflix has churned out something much better than this crap.