The Last Two
2020 · 5m · USA
Directed by Amy Huckabay
Genres: comedy, romance, sci-fi
Two survivors meet after the apocalypse and immediately confront the awkward elephant in the wasteland: they are now responsible for repopulating Earth. A first-encounter romantic comedy compressed into five minutes.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Finally—someone weaponizes rom-com formula against itself by strapping it to an existential biological gun. The premise is so perfectly perverse (small talk as species continuation duty) that it demolishes the genre's DNA while pretending to play ball, and that's exactly the kind of subversive move everyone else will sleep on.
Huckabay's compression of When Harry Met Sally's architecture into five minutes of apocalyptic small talk shows formal command—each beat has to carry double weight—though the film's tonal acrobatics risk undercutting the genuine tension that would ground this in a richer tradition of romantic constraint.
The masterstroke is the sound design of awkward pauses and overlapping dialogue that turns desperation into comedy without ever winking at the audience; that single choice to let the discomfort breathe rather than punch it makes the whole premise sing on a shoestring budget.
Festivals
- Portland International Film Festival
- LadyFilmmakers Film Festival