Nerdly » ‘Chronical: 2067’ Review

24th Nov2020

‘Chronical: 2067’ Review

by Kevin Haldon

Stars: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Ryan Kwanten, Sana’a Shaik, Deborah Mailman, Aaron Glenane | Written and Directed by Seth Larney

400 years from now you have to ask… Are we worth saving?

It still amazes me to this day that Jason Stackhouse (Ryan Kwantan, True Blood) is none other than lifeguard Vinnie from Home and Away. I mean back on that show he was the chubby lovable idiot now he is ripped and a bloody great actor to boot. So apart from utterly useless trivia about who an actor played years back, I am also a bit of a sci-fi nerd and when Chronical: 2067 (or just 2067 outside the UK) crossed my table and was billed as a timey-wimey, post-apocalyptic sci-fi with that young lad from The Road who is all grown up now and True Blood’s Jason Stackhouse (aka actor Ryan Kwanten). Well that was me interested jumping in with both feet. Question is, was the water warm enough for me to bathe in its glory? Or did I just watch another lame time travel flick that makes not a lick of sense? Let’s find out with Chronical: 2067…

In the not to distant future, more precisely the year 2067, Earth is pretty screwed. An extinction world ending level event has befallen us and the air is so badly polluted that mankind now has to wear oxygen masks when they go outside. We meet Ethan Whyte (Smit-McPhee) a reclusive outsider who might just be the saviour of the world. It turns out the big energy corporation of the movie have recieved a message from the future on their fancy pants time machine. Ethan is catapulted 400 years into the future to find the cure however what he finds could be a whole lot more sinister. Now along with his lifelong friend Jude (Kwanten) they need to figure out how to save our future or if indeed we are worth saving.

Big props to writer/director Seth Larney and his team here, Chronical: 2067 looks a lot bigger than I’m guessing the budget might suggest. I know amazing things can be done with VFX these days but this flick looks gorgeous and epic in all the right places. The plot isn’t exactly reinventing the wheel in terms of originality, and it leans heavily into some pretty tropey time travel rules BUT it does this well, and never feels like it’s clubbing you over the head… By this I mean that it respects the audiences intelligence.

Kodi Smit-McPhee puts in a good performance as usual and for my tastes and brings this really raw fragility to Ethan – once again and this is a regular comment on McPhee from me but he never seems to quite get to that top tier I know he can acheive. He is nicely propped up though by a wonderful turn from Kwanten who, ever since his True Blood days, has done nothing but great things, proving again that the Australian actors are second only to the Brits!

The film’s score is worthy of a mention too – with many well-chosen themes to accompany the visuals, but in particular massive shout out to the Melbourne Symphonic Orchestra who pop up in a few key scenes and serve to elevate the incredible cinematography in places.

I can see what is going to happen with this movie and that is that people will say “stick it on SYFY”. However Chronical: 2067 is better than that and absolutely deserves your time. The time travel is a tad wonky but hey it’s time travel so shut up! I can’t say enough about the VFX and the job Seth Larney has done in essentially creating two vastly different versions of Earth and they both look better than most mega budget Hollywood trash.

A solid sci-fi movie… you could do a whole lot worse than this indie flick. Seth Larney… I’ll be watching out for you in future!