By David Dent
It’s been a few years since the global pandemic shut down the world and, perhaps predictably, we’ve done a good job of collectively excising it from our collective memories. ‘Touchdown’ throws us right back into those interesting times; a sci fi movie shot in lockdown which somehow manages the feat of using locations filmed in seven countries.
Five friends spread around the globe, connected through social media, are trying to arrange a meet up when two of their number announce their engagement. But through the various screens of each of them, they receive reports of alien landings, and witness as each country’s government announces lockdown plans to keep its various populations safe.
We spend most of the time with bright and breezy Jamie (Clinton Liberty) whose optimistic social media postings encourage everyone to look on the bright side. But not everything in his garden is rosy; a complicated ‘will they won’t they’ relationship with group friend Emma (Cressida Bonas) makes things awkward for everybody.
But that drama soon fades into the background as the aliens alive and the young friends must stay alive. Ramping up the precautions put in place by our own Government, here the UK Prime Minister (Tim Downie), making his slogan riddled address from between two very familiar Union flags, announces curfews and drone armies to ensure that people stay off the streets (one of the friends, Jerry – played by Will Attenborough – fails to play ball and is mown down for this transgression).
In the grand tradition of all low budget sci fi flicks the aliens only really appear in the last few minutes of the movie, just in time for Jamie to have a sort of messiah like moment; I wouldn’t put him in charge of going for a takeaway but maybe that’s just me.
Writer/producer/director Josephine Rose clearly had thoughts about the appropriateness of how this country responded to the pandemic and it shines through in her script; TV news channels here accent their reportage with phrases like the ‘undemocratic stripping of civil liberties’, Governments regularly lie and cover up the truth, and the fact that Jerry died giving the middle finger to the powers that be is here viewed as tragic rather than foolish. It’s an interesting movie but not, sadly, a very exciting one.
Bloody Flicks 