Aster and Sidney
2016 · 18m · United States
Directed by Sean Temple
Genres: drama, sci-fi, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
Two survivors bond and flee the city, seeking isolation in the wilderness while staying constantly vigilant against those who would take what little they have.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Post-apocalyptic survivalism is played so straight here that it almost becomes invisible—which is exactly why it doesn't work; the premise needs a wink, a twist, *something* to justify another run at the genre's most exhausted sandbox.
Temple deploys the two-hander and landscape-as-antagonist with formal competence, situating himself in a lineage of intimate survival cinema, though the execution never quite achieves the philosophical weight its restraint seems to promise.
The film's entire grip lives in the decision to keep the threat abstract and off-screen—no monsters, no named enemy, just the *sound design* of unseen pursuit—and that single choice transforms what could've been rote into something genuinely unsettling.