Review: After Earth

Review: After Earth

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast: Will Smith, Jaden Smith

Running time: 100 Minutes

Oh, M. Night Shyamalan. You've done it again, you old rascal. Only this time you've dragged the reputations of the Fresh Prince and his son down with you!

After Earth may not be the very worst blockbuster of 2013 (by a small margin that crown still belongs to Movie 43), but it's definitely making a strong case for the prize. Ridiculous to a fault, horribly acted from the start and presenting only one or two redeeming qualities, Shyamalan's latest is simply an uncompromisingly bad movie. 

Audiences will still go and see it though, thanks to the appeal of Will Smith and his son Jaden, for whom this film was intended to be a vehicle into super stardom. Unfortunately, while Smith Senior delivers the goods albeit with an oddly chosen accent, his son simply cannot carry the full weight of a genre movie on his shoulders quite yet. He has potential (to quote Louis Walsh) but in a film where only two characters are our focus, Jaden fails to entice as a protagonist.

Frankly this is the wrong genre for such a film anyway. A 12A certificate grants After Earth the mere luxury of dabbles of blood here and there and but one jump scare, whereas this family-friendly sci-fi could have been much greater as a survival horror a la Dog Soldiers. Shyamalan knows best though, right?

The premise itself is actually really accessible, although it's through a long, confusingly told slog of exposition that we get to the point. Having exhausted our world and its resources, Cypher (Will) and his son Kitai (Jaden) are members of a colony of humans living out in the stars. When their ship crash lands on a particularly deadly planet, Kitai wakes to find the rest of the crew dead on impact - all except his father. However, with two broken legs and no sign of recovery imminent, Cypher sends Kitai out on to the deadly planet's surface to locate a beacon which will bring help. "Do you know where we are?" he asks his son, as the audience waits with baited breath. "This is Earth."

Oh my goodness! What a twist! Although the clue is really in the title...

The whole narrative is bafflingly dull, not helped at all by the strangely subdued performance by Will Smith. Perhaps it's intentional to give his son more space to strut his stuff, but really it alienates us further by making us bored. Even in I Am Legend when he had nought but a dog for company, he was more enjoyable to watch.

That said, the script does grant him one fantastic speech regarding the psychology of fear ("Fear is fiction. It's nothing but a fake vision of our own future"), one which Batman himself would be proud of, but writer/director Shyamalan fails to elaborate further and allows After Earth to fall into tired, clichéd chases through jungles and rocky terrain.

Constant flashbacks to Kitai's childhood are always imminent too, which does nothing to keep us going considering that it's effectively the same flashback from different viewpoints again and again. Shyamalan's directorial decisions are painfully annoying too, with some frantically shot scenes quickly cutting to black so frequently that it becomes a headache. 

Are there any redeeming qualities from After Earth? Well, now and again there are promises of what could have been. The (rare) action is decent enough but a lot of the CGI looks unworthy for even a film student project, and the chemistry between Smith Senior and Smith Junior is believable...but then it would be, wouldn't it? Jaden's not cut out for this sort of movie yet though - The Karate Kid remake, while unnecessary, showed off a great performance from the young actor and hopefully this film won't kill his career before it's even begun.

Summary

After Earth is one of the worst movies to hit our cinema screens this year. As a survival horror with a 15 rating it could have been very enjoyable, but thanks to its family-friendly certificate it doesn't realise its potential. M. Night Shyamalan makes some very annoying directorial choices and despite Will Smith himself pitching the story, the narrative is a completely boring shambles. His son Jaden fails to be an inspiring protagonist, spending the entire running time whimpering and crying and while there is some potential for excellent dialogue here and there, it's all squandered by pointless chases and boring sentimentality. If this is the way cinema is going, I don't want to live on this planet any more either.

2/10 - Awful

See it if you liked: Signs (2002), Predators (2010), Oblivion (2013)