Here's an unassuming little film scrappily hitting cinemas against mega-hits like Barbie and well-funded comic book flicks like Blue Beetle - and more than holding its own.
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Writer-director Mel Eslyn's two-hander about the last two blokes surviving the apocalypse proves that solid writing and strong performances can outdo huge budgets.
Even though it seems the world might have ended, life doesn't seem too different for since-childhood best friends Billy (Mark Duplass) and Ray (Sterling K Brown), spending their days joking and swapping amusing stories about the Mario Brothers, sex and childhood memories while playing video games and jogging.
They're able to do all these things despite an apparent nature-destroying apocalypse thanks to the survivalist biome shelter that scientist Ray had the foresight to build before the end-of-days came.
Within the confines of the dome are a running track, hydroponics tanks, bookshelves curated with "how to" manuals and literature, and plenty of video games.
So the boys have had to get used to a smaller life, and one without any female company, but some years have passed and despite Billy's occasional anxiety attack, they seem to be keeping it together.
There is some worry when their last female fish dies, meaning an end to their protein source, but then nature surprises when one of the male fish, in an act of "elevated evolution", changes gender as sometimes happens in the animal kingdom.
This promising happenstance coincides with the presence of a faint green light in the sky outside, a sky that has been black for years.
Before the boys have time to get their heads around this, another act of elevated evolution occurs and suddenly it becomes possible that these two last people on earth might not be the end of humankind after all.
Gender morphing characters have appeared throughout film and literature - "Same person, just a different sex", says Tilda Swinton's Orlando in Sally Potter's 2002 film.
It's a clever bit of writing from Mel Eslyn and Mark Duplass, a screenplay that unpacks modern masculinity, gender and homophobia, not being preachy but delivering it through character-based humour.
It's a bit of a slight screenplay despite those subjects being weighty, but then this is a film about two people thoroughly bored and trapped together, and it is an afternoon Mensa lecture compared to the 1996 Pauley Shore and Stephen Baldwin film Bio Dome, which is sort of about the same thing. Sort of.
In fact, Eslyn and Duplass's screenplay would not need much adapting for the stage, and I'd pay to see that play.
It references a bunch of sci-fi with similar scenarios, particularly 2001, and shares a joyous gallows-humour cynicism with the fun end-of-the-world TV series Last Man On Earth.
The film's set is great fun, one single giant piece built on a sound stage by the production team of Megan Fenton, Christine Brandt and Samantha Bowling, and allows for long takes moving through the space like one of those West Wing walk-and-talks.
What makes this film work is the chemistry between Brown and Duplass, an easy patter in their language and their body language, and I think it is one of the film's charms that this isn't the masterclass in scenery-chewing it might have been, with two folk facing the end of the world, as they're both such laid-back characters.
Considering the blokes' interplay and one awful and hilarious scene, it's impressive the film sticks to an M rating.
Mark Duplass and his brother Jay have been true innovators in low-budget indie American cinema and audiences might be familiar with their 2012 Safety Not Guaranteed or 2014 flick The Skeleton Twins.
First-time director Mel Eslyn usually runs the Duplass Brothers' production company, and she directs with a style that morphs between genres as the scene requires.
