vesper movie review reddit

Vesper gives the apocalypse a pretty face and an ugly heart

For a small indie sci-fi movie, the special effects are stunning, and the world is incredibly well-realized

by Tasha Robinson

13-year-old Vesper (Raffiella Chapman) stands in a barren field with giant rusty octopus robots on the horizon in Vesper

Polygon is on the ground at the 2022 Fantastic Fest, reporting on new horror, sci-fi, cult, and action movies making their way to theaters and streaming. This review was published in conjunction with the film’s Fantastic Fest premiere.

Grim futures and hopeless circumstances are so common on screen that they’ve come to feel like the default mode for science fiction storytelling, particularly in low-budget movies. It’s hard for one crapsack world or future-fascist dystopia to stand out over all the others, when so many sci-fi stories expressly warn us about how every aspect of our lives could possibly lead us toward some sort of apocalypse . The indie science fiction movie Vesper is no exception to that rule — it takes place in a future where Earth has been rendered near-uninhabitable, and the survivors either hide in shining enclaves called Citadels or eke out hand-to-mouth lives in the wreckage outside the Citadels’ walls. But dystopian sci-fi has rarely been as delicately and beautifully detailed as Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper’s new film.

Vesper simultaneously plays like a resourceful shoestring-budget indie in the realm of Dual and like Alex Garland’s $50 million passion project Annihilation . It’s a small-scale story, at times so hushed and minimalist that even putting two characters in the same room can feel overcrowded. But in their first movie release since 2012’s well-received sci-fi import Vanishing Waves , Buozyte and Samper do an impressive job of creating a plausible, tangible world around these quiet spaces. The scenery tells the story as effectively as any laborious exposition could.

Vesper (Raffiella Chapman) and Camellia (Rosy McEwen) stand in Vesper’s dark, crowded lab in Vesper

An opening title card labels Vesper ’s ugly version of the future as “The New Dark Ages.” Facing environmental collapse, humanity tried to stave off catastrophe through genetic engineering. But modified viruses and organisms escaped into the wild and took up the role of invasive species, wiping out Earth’s original biosphere and supplanting it with aggressive new forms of life. The only seeds that will still grow come from Citadel labs and are designed to produce sterile crops, so outsiders have to trade for or purchase new seeds every growing season.

Thirteen-year-old Vesper (Raffiella Chapman) is stubbornly determined to apply what she knows about science to the problem, and she tinkers away in a grubby lab, splicing DNA to figure out how to unlock Citadel seeds or grow her own edible plants. But the project has to take a back seat to survival, as she tries to feed herself and her paralyzed father, Darius (Richard Brake), with whatever she can glean or scrounge from their lethal environment.

There’s no timeline for when or how any of this happened, but the setting shows all the signs of a world that became far more advanced than ours before it collapsed. Darius can’t move or speak, but a grubby plug leading into his brain lets him accompany Vesper on her rounds via a hovering telepresence drone, through which he perpetually grumbles about her choices and how much time she wastes on trying to make their lives better. Meanwhile, Darius’ quietly predatory brother, Jonas (Eddie Marsan), runs a small, rough enclave nearby, where he’s bred a flock of children whose blood is a valuable commodity in trades with the Citadel.

While Vesper is his niece, and barely past pubescence, he makes no secret that he wants her as breeding stock. In a genre where evil often comes in the form of killer-robot armies or towering, powerful villainy, Darius stands out as a deeper and more personal kind of monster just in the proprietary, knowing way he looks at Vesper when she comes to him in a crisis, and the boundary-testing ways he touches her when they both know she can’t afford to make him angry.

Then a drone from one of the Citadels crash-lands near his enclave, and Vesper finds an elfin woman named Camellia (Rosy McEwen) wounded near the wreckage. Camellia promises that if Vesper gets her and her father, Elias, safely to a Citadel, Vesper will be granted entry herself. It’s everything Vesper wants — but naturally, the offer comes with a few major catches.

Vesper ’s basic story plays out in ways familiar from sci-fi movies as small as Prospect and as oversized and bombastic as Elysium . Any time a faceless group of all-powerful elites faces off against a single determined have-not living in their shadow, it’s fairly clear that there are going to be a lot of small hopes built and dashed along the road to finding some kind of path forward, and that virtually everyone else in the story is there to curry favor from those elites and stand in the protagonist’s way. Vesper doesn’t do enough to differentiate its dynamic from so many other movies like it; so much of its action seems inevitable that there’s almost no room for surprise.

And the movie as a whole often feels like a grab bag of elements from other memorable, often culty sci-fi movies: the ramshackle technology, father-and-daughter dynamic, and intimidating alien world of Prospect ; the solemn intellectual and inescapable oppression of Duncan Jones’ Moon ; the dreary palette and strained, exhausted desperation of Children of Men ; and more. Vesper would make a comfortable double feature with any of them — or with movies like The Road , The Survivalist , or Cargo .

Vesper (Raffiella Chapman) holds her hand over a delicate, glowing flower that reaches its tendrils toward her in Vesper

But what makes Vesper memorable isn’t the uniqueness of its ideas, it’s the uniqueness of how they’re expressed. The distinctions start with Chapman’s performance in the title role; she isn’t the fierce, combative hero of so many dystopian-future stories, but a head-down, wary survivalist who even at 13 has clearly learned caution and care. Chapman and the script give Vesper a form of grit that feels unusual for this kind of story. Her every move acknowledges her history, as a young teenager with too much responsibility and too much freedom. Her father may disapprove of her, but he can’t do anything to stop her from doing what she wants. She excuses her choices to him, but makes them without apology or remorse. She’s meek and iron-willed at the same time, and it’s an intriguing combination.

The small details about her past and the world that emit from that performance are all the more welcome because no one has to spell them out. The same goes for the production design and world-building. It’s found in little details, like the inexpertly rendered face on Darius’ hover-drone, clearly painted on by a much younger Vesper who was trying to make him seem more comfortingly human. Or it’s found in compelling mysteries, like the secrets behind the “pilgrims,” silent people who hide their faces and constantly collect inedible scraps to haul off to some unknown destination. No one ever bothers to explain the immense, disintegrating octopus-like machines scattered across the landscape — like the similar robots in Amazon’s Tales From the Loop series , they’re just part of the backdrop of the world, an obvious remnant of a former failed effort to reclaim the world for a wider range of humanity than the few cloistered survivors.

Vesper ’s strongest asset, apart from Chapman’s resilient determination and Marsan’s subtle, unshowy menace, is the way special effects are used to populate that world with a seemingly infinite array of ominous life. The condition Vesper finds Camellia in — with slow-moving tentacled things (plants? Animals? Both? Neither?) opportunistically latched on to all her wounds — is both vividly horrifying and treated offhandedly as the obvious result of someone falling unconscious outside. Everywhere Vesper goes, unsettling things twitch, throb, or gape open hungrily on trees and plants. When Darius’ hover-drone is opened, it reveals a sickeningly Cronenbergian form of bio-tech, all frills, membranes, and thick, glutinous goop. Even the Citadel ships look like disturbing insectoid monstrosities.

Inevitably, sci-fi fans who prefer the revved-up speeds and frequent action sequences of Star Wars shows like The Mandalorian and Book of Boba Fett will complain that Vesper is too slow and too quiet. It’s a legitimate gripe for people who said the same thing about Annihilation , or Andrei Tarkovsky’s similar Stalker before it, or any other piece of science fiction that’s more cerebral than physical. But for the kind of science fiction fans who loved Moon or Kogonada ’s After Yang , Vesper is a rich pleasure: a familiar enough story, but told with a thousand creepy, vibrant, crawling grace notes.

Vesper will be in theaters and on VOD on Sept. 30.

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Vesper Reviews

Despite the fact that this indie project lacked the financial resources of some of Hollywood’s big-budget post-apocalyptic, action-heavy films, the filmmakers exceed expectations in terms of world-building, stunning visual effects, and storytelling.

Full Review | Oct 26, 2023

It’s a fascinating film that discusses the reality and survival of the world through a much deeper lens with otherworldly visuals.

Full Review | Sep 8, 2023

Incredibly imaginative and empowering, this sci-fi tale with a memorable 13-year-old main character shows that intelligence and compassion are heroic qualities.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 19, 2023

Vesper is another movie depicting a bleak hellscape of a not-so-distant future, but the film contains some great performances, an original story, and shimmering visuals [to] keep things interesting all the way through.

Full Review | Jul 14, 2023

With its visual potency, commitment to pure sci-fi, and emotional warmth, Vesper is a film worth considering. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 7, 2023

Directors Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper compose a delicate, precise and extremely lyrical fable about disaster. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 6, 2023

A story of wonders and salvation. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 3, 2023

For something a bit different to your usual blockbuster sci-fi fare, try Vesper. It feels small, earthy, contained to a handful of locations, without the overdone pontificating grandeur.

Full Review | Apr 6, 2023

Chapman, who spends significant portions of Vesper on her own or with only Darius' drone prop for a scene partner, proves a worthy lead.

Full Review | Jan 9, 2023

The film's storyline is stretched thin at a few points, mostly because all of it takes place in this post-apocalyptic forest and they have to figure out how to give her something to do and local baddies to confront before she ventures out.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 30, 2022

The movie creates an astounding world to look at, and it smartly doesn’t try to explain every strange detail.

Full Review | Nov 16, 2022

There’s some very inventive special effects work -- both practical and CGI... Unfortunately, it appears that not quite as much attention and imagination was paid to the script as was given to the look of the film.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 24, 2022

It’s inventive and atmospheric, just not entirely coherent.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 23, 2022

If you are going to see one post-apocalyptic, low-tech French-Lithuanian-Belgian film in English this year with Eddie Marsan as the heavy, make sure it’s this one.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 20, 2022

…tapping into current anxieties about genetic engineering, Vesper turns out to be an unexpectedly smart sci-fi drama…

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 19, 2022

Buozyte and Samper, along with their visual and special effects crew, create a rich and dazzling world not yet seen before

Full Review | Oct 12, 2022

“Vesper” is a transporting experience and a masterclass on immersive world-building, showing that you don’t need the deep pockets of a major studio to create an absorbing setting.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 12, 2022

The world is beautifully realised by directors Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper. Splicing the organic with a sprinkle of magic.

Full Review | Oct 9, 2022

A wonder to look at, complemented by elegant performances, Vesper presents a haunting apocalyptic nightmare that is hard to pull away from.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 9, 2022

Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper’s sci-fi plays out the self-destructive problems of late-capitalist patriarchy in a mutant dystopia

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Movie Review: ‘The Crow’ reimagined is stylish and operatic, but cannot outfly 1994 original

This image released by Lionsgate shows Bill Skarsgård in “The Crow”. (Larry Horricks/Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows Bill Skarsgård, left, and FKA twigs in “The Crow”. (Larry Horricks/Lionsgate via AP)

Bill Skarsgard attends “The Crow” world premiere at the Village East by Angelika on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Rupert Sanders, from left, FKA twigs, and Bill Skarsgard attend “The Crow” world premiere at the Village East by Angelika on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

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One of the first things you see in the reimagined “The Crow” is the sight of a fallen white horse in a muddy field, bleeding badly after becoming entangled in barbed wire. It’s a metaphor, of course, and a clunky one at that — a powerful image that doesn’t really fit well and is never explained.

That’s a hint that director Rupert Sanders will have a tendency to consistently pick the stylish option over the honest one in this film. In his attempt to give new life to the cult hero of comics and film, he’s given us plenty of beauty at the expense of depth or coherence.

The filmmakers have set their tale in a modern, generic Europe and made it very clear that this movie is based on the graphic novel by James O’Barr, but the 1994 film adaptation starring Brandon Lee hovers over it like, well, a stubborn crow.

Brandon, son of legendary actor and martial artist Bruce Lee, was just 28 when he died after being shot while filming a scene for “The Crow.” History seems always to repeat: The new adaptation lands as another on-set death remains in the headlines.

Lee’s “The Crow” was finished without him and he never got to see it enter Gen X memory in all its rain-drenched, gothic glory, influencing everything from alternative fashion to “Blade” to Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy.

Bill Skarsgård seizes Lee’s role of Eric Draven, a man so in love that he returns from the dead to revenge his and his sweetheart’s slayings in what can be best called a sort of supernatural, romantic murderfest. (The tagline, “True love never dies,” clumsily rips off Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera.”)

William Schneider, who co-wrote the screenplay with Zach Baylin, has given the story a near-operatic facelift, by introducing a devil, a Faustian bargain, blood-on-blood oaths and a godlike guide who monitors the limbo between heaven and hell, which looks like a disused, weed-covered railway station. “Kill the ones who killed you and you’ll get her back,” our hero is told.

The first half drags at it sets the table for the steady beat of limbs and necks being detached at the end. Eric and his love, Shelly (played by an uneven FKA Twigs), meet in a rehab prison for wayward youth that is so well lit and appointed that it looks more like an airport lounge where the cappuccinos are $19 but the Wi-Fi is complimentary.

Eric is a gentle loner — tortured by a past the writers don’t bother filling in, who likes to sketch in a book (universal cinema code signaling a sensitive soul) and is heavily tattooed (he’s often shirtless). His apartment has rows of mannequins with their heads covered in plastic and his new love calls him “brilliantly broken.” He’s like a Blink-182 lyric come to life.

Shelly is more complex, but that’s because the writers maybe gave up on giving her a real backstory. She has a tattoo that says “Laugh now, cry later,” reads serious literature and loves dancing in her underwear. She clearly comes from wealth and has had a falling out with her mom, but has also done an unimaginably horrible thing, which viewers will learn about at the end.

Part of the trouble is that the lead couple cast off very little electricity, offering a love affair that’s more teen-like than all-consuming. And this is a story that needs a love capable of transcending death.

There are lots of cool-looking moments — mostly Skarsgård in a trench coat, stomping around the desolate concrete jungle in the rain at night — until “The Crow” builds to one of the better action sequences this year, albeit another one of those heightened showdowns at the opera.

By this time, Eric has donned the Crow’s heavy eye and cheek makeup. He adds to this ensemble a katana and an inability to die. As he closes in on his target, mowing down tuxedoed bad guys as arias soar, the group movements on stage are echoed by the furious fighting backstage. A few severed heads might be considered over the top at curtain call, but subtlety isn’t being applauded here.

If the original was plot-light but visually delicious, the new one has a better story but suffers from ideas in the films built on its predecessor, stealing a little from “The Matrix,” “Joker” and “Kill Bill.” Why not create something entirely new?

“The Crow” isn’t bad — and it gets better as it goes — but it’s an exercise in folly. It cannot escape Lee and the 1994 original even as it builds a more allegorical scaffolding for the smartphone generation. To use that very first metaphor, it’s like the trapped white horse — held down by its own painful past, never free to gallop on its own.

“The Crow,” a Lionsgate release that hits theaters Friday, is rated R for “strong bloody violence, gore, language, sexuality/nudity and drug use.” Running time: 111 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

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Danielle Deadwyler as Berniece in 'The Piano Lesson.'

In Malcolm Washington’s directorial debut, a reverential adaptation of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson produced by his father Denzel Washington , the actress Danielle Deadwyler is the center around which all other performances revolve.

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By now, most reasonably savvy moviegoers are well aware that Labor Day weekend tends to be an especially dire period for anyone looking to painlessly kill a couple of hours in the multiplex. The only things that seem to open (“escape” is probably a more suitable term) then are misbegotten messes that are dumped out in the hopes that they might score a few quick bucks from viewers who have grown weary from all the played-out summer hits but who don’t want to wait a couple more weeks for the fall Oscar derby to begin. I don’t know if anyone has ever tried to do a ranking of such films but if they did, I am fairly sure that the techno-horror thriller “AfrAId” would land pretty close to the bottom. Here is a film that is so awful in so many ways that at one point, it includes a clip from the notoriously dreadful “The Emoji Movie” and you begin to worry that that film’s reputation might be tarnished by association.

John Cho stars as Curtis, a marketing expert whose boss (Keith Carradine, presumably needing something to do while waiting for a new Alan Rudolph project to come together) assigns him to a new client, a digital assistant dubbed AIA (voiced by Havana Rose Liu) that has been designed, with the aid of incredible advances in artificial intelligence, to not only bring order to the lives of its users but also anticipate all their needs as well. Although initially apprehensive—possibly because one of the representatives of the company behind AIA is played by none other than the reliably creepy David Dastmalchian in a too-short role—the money involved is so great that not only does Curtis sign on, he even agrees to bring it home to his family: Frustrated entomologist-turned-housewife Meredith (Katherine Waterston), snarky teen daughter Iris (Lukita Maxwell), anxious middle son Preston (Wyatt Lindner) and precocious young one Cal (Isaac Bae).

At first, AIA seems to be a blessing for the entire household—it gives Meredith time to get back to her studies, diagnosis a medical condition in Cal overlooked by doctors and takes care of things when Iris’s jerk boyfriend (Benet Curran) creates a deepfake porn video of her that gets spread around school. As time goes on, though, Curtis begins to suspect that there is something very peculiar about AIA and the people behind it—not to mention the odd people living in a motor home parked directly across from their house—and decides to get rid of it. What he doesn’t realize is that AIA has already demonstrated a bit of a dark side—taking the punishment of Iris’s jerk boyfriend to the next level—and that it will go to violent lengths to ensure that it stays online.

My guess is that of the brave and crazy few who actually venture out to see “AfrAId” this weekend, not too many of them will be going in with anything resembling elevated expectations. And yet, even those with appropriately lowered standards may be shocked by how badly it misses the mark. As a horror exercise, it completely fails to generate anything in the way of actual tension—things get so slow that you start hoping for a few cheapo “BOO!” moments to perk things up a bit. As a Michael Crichton-style techno-thriller, it is so completely preposterous that it makes “Looker” seem like “Westworld” by comparison. As an exploration of mankind’s tenuous relationship with the forces of technology and the inherent dangers that it has toward humanity as a whole, it is absolutely nothing of value to say, other than the somewhat dubious notion that swatting can be used as a force of good.

The only genuinely startling thing about “AfrAId” (and if you are growing increasingly aggravated by the annoying spelling of the title, imagine how I feel typing it out each time) comes at the very end. No, not the big finale, which is such a mass of narrative incoherence and sloppy filmmaking that the fact that anyone thought that it was a suitable conclusion for even an otherwise bad movie is baffling beyond belief. I am talking about the moment when the end credits kick in and we find that the film, which bears all the creative earmarks of a first-time filmmaker who knows the movies that they are aspiring to copy here but has no idea of what actually made them work, was actually written and directed by Chris Weitz, a veteran whose credits include such projects as “About A Boy,” “A Better Life” and “Rogue One.” Those films, you will recall, had characters and situations that were of real interest that made them work while this one feels like he fed the phrase “‘M3GAN,’ but with Siri” into an AI program that, based on the end results, is in serious need of debugging.

Outside of one amusing moment early on when AIA disses its competition with the dismissive “Alexa, that bitch?,” “AfrAId” is a complete bust that has the nerve to overtly compare itself at one point to “2001: A Space Odyssey” even though it ultimately proves to be little more than this generation’s “Fear Dot Com” (and even that film had a certain visual verve that is utterly lacking here). The closest thing to a good thing that could be said about it is that it will be so quickly and decisively forgotten that it will almost be as if it never actually existed. This may not be the worst movie of the year but it is certainly one of the laziest and definitely an embarrassment to everyone involved with its production.

And with that, I hereby vow to never write the word “AfrAId” again for as long as I live.

Peter Sobczynski

A moderately insightful critic, full-on Swiftie and all-around bon vivant , Peter Sobczynski, in addition to his work at this site, is also a contributor to The Spool and can be heard weekly discussing new Blu-Ray releases on the Movie Madness podcast on the Now Playing network.

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Katherine Waterston as Meredith
Keith Carradine as Marcus
Havana Rose Liu as Melody / AIA
Lukita Maxwell as Iris
David Dastmalchian as Lightning
Riki Lindhome as Maud
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Vesper Movie Poster: A girl with short hair stands facing a large metal pod in a swamp, with the tagline "one seed can change everything" at the top

Common Sense Says
Parents Say 0 Reviews
Kids Say 0 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Violent, creative sci-fi drama has strong female lead.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 14+?

Murders and deaths, including an on-camera shooting in the head and a suffocatio

A couple of instances of "s--t" and "shut up."

Any Positive Content?

One person can change the world, but it's our collaboration with others that all

Caring, compassionate, and brave, 13-year-old Vesper is a highly intelligent, se

Main characters are White. Vesper is a brave, smart, compassionate 13-year-old g

Violence & Scariness

Murders and deaths, including an on-camera shooting in the head and a suffocation. Under orders, a teen repeatedly stabs (fatally) a lab-created creature that resembles a human -- the knife isn't shown going into the body, but the bloody knife wounds are; later, we see its body strung upside down with blood dripping. Dead bodies, including that of a child. An attempted suicide ultimately has a positive resolution. Stabbings. Physical fight between a man and two young women. It's subtly implied that a young woman has been held captive and raped/abused. Worrisome, perilous moment when boys attack and hold down a teen girl. Gaping wounds. Explosion. Creepy images. Young characters express deep pain and fear in loss of parents and caretakers. Main character is dealing with the impact of parental abandonment.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

One person can change the world, but it's our collaboration with others that allows us to become that person. Theme of determinism and that we are more than our geography, our genetics, and our station in life. Exploiting and manipulating nature has consequences.

Positive Role Models

Caring, compassionate, and brave, 13-year-old Vesper is a highly intelligent, self-taught environmental scientist and biohacker. Dad Darius has faced challenges but is still his daughter's companion, protector, and supporter. Camellia does what she can to help Vesper and Darius.

Diverse Representations

Main characters are White. Vesper is a brave, smart, compassionate 13-year-old girl with strong skills in science and biological engineering. Her dad, a former solider, is only able to stay alive through a machine that breathes for him, but his disability doesn't define his worth.

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Parents need to know that Vesper is a violent but thought-provoking sci-fi drama about a young teen surviving with her disabled father in a dystopian world. Diving into issues related to biological and genetic engineering, it celebrates intelligence while also letting viewers conclude that exploiting and manipulating nature has consequences. Main character Vesper (Raffiela Chapman) is a great role model -- smart, curious, caring, compassionate, and innovative -- whose stubborn strength has been gained from growing up in difficult and desolate circumstances. She's been abandoned by her mother, which makes her cling harder to the young woman she rescues, who represents a more traditional view of women: Camellia ( Rosy McEwen ) is nurturing, loving, and feminine, and embraces a role of serving others. Their connection allows both to grow and realize they're capable of more. Violence in this world is vivid and frequent, with bloody and deadly stabbings, shootings, attacks, fights, and suffocation. An attempted suicide has a positive resolution. Some viewers will understand that a character has been sexually abused. Language-wise, there's one use of "s--t." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

Following the collapse of the Earth's ecosystem, there's a lack of food and sympathy in the rural lands outside the wealthy Citadel. VESPER (Raffiella Chapman), a 13-year-old who must care for herself and her disabled father, Darius ( Richard Brake ), uses her curiosity and pursuit of botanical science and engineering to help the two survive. When Vesper rescues privileged Camellia ( Rosy McEwen ) from an aerial crash, she agrees to hide the other woman and help her in exchange for entry into the Citadel. But if she's caught, she faces the wrath of her cruel and controlling Uncle Jonas ( Eddie Marsan ).

Is It Any Good?

Incredibly imaginative and empowering, this sci-fi tale with a memorable 13-year-old main character shows that intelligence and compassion are heroic qualities. An alternate title for Vesper could be Fantastic Plants and Where to Find Them , as the future of Earth -- as projected by writing-directing team Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper -- is both a wonder and a nightmare due to genetic "biohacking." Beyond plants, genetic engineering has evolved to create artificial humans known as "jugs," who are built to be enslaved. While government bioengineers haven't quite perfected the jug formula, the idea of what synthetic people might mean to humanity is substantial fodder for conversation.

The movie's plot is sophisticated and cerebral, and the script assumes that viewers are, too -- it doesn't dwell in explanations. The intense violence isn't gratuitous, but it is realistically blunt for the circumstances. For teens mature enough to embrace the storytelling, Vesper is a mind-blowing marvel, and the character herself is a magnificent role model.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in Vesper. How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

What is a coming-of-age story? How do Vesper and Camellia both find their own identity through emancipation?

How do the characters demonstrate courage , curiosity , and perseverance ? Why are these important life skills? Do you consider Vesper a role model? Why, or why not?

When Vesper rescues Camellia, is it because she's showing compassion or because she thinks there's an advantage to be gained? How does saving Camellia alter her life -- and is the outcome positive or negative?

Movie Details

In theaters : September 30, 2022
On DVD or streaming : September 30, 2022
Cast : Raffiella Chapman , Rosy McEwen , Eddie Marsan
Directors : Kristina Buozyte , Bruno Samper
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : IFC Films
Genre : Science Fiction
Topics : Science and Nature
Character Strengths : Courage , Curiosity , Perseverance
Run time : 114 minutes
MPAA rating : NR
Last updated : May 8, 2024

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Cast & crew
User reviews

Struggling to survive with her father after the collapse of Earth's ecosystem, 13-year-old Vesper must use her wits, strength and bio-hacking abilities to fight for the future. Struggling to survive with her father after the collapse of Earth's ecosystem, 13-year-old Vesper must use her wits, strength and bio-hacking abilities to fight for the future. Struggling to survive with her father after the collapse of Earth's ecosystem, 13-year-old Vesper must use her wits, strength and bio-hacking abilities to fight for the future.

Kristina Buozyte
Bruno Samper
Brian Clark
Raffiella Chapman
Eddie Marsan
Rosy McEwen
178 User reviews
111 Critic reviews
70 Metascore
6 wins & 10 nominations

Top cast 12

All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

Trivia While visual effects are present in the movie, they are mostly there to enhance a shot with a plant or a ship, as no scenes were shot against a green screen.

Darius : Oh Vesper, you don't know the cost of dreams.

Connections References Fantastic Planet (1973)
Soundtracks Just a wave Written & Composed by Yorina Performed by Yorina

Technical specs

Runtime 1 hour 54 minutes
Dolby Digital

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‘Vesper’ Review: A Feat of Low-Budget Sci-Fi World-Building

David ehrlich.

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Set in “the new dark ages” — a ruined tomorrow in which the engineered viruses and organisms that humanity created in order to stem the planet’s ecological crisis have escaped into the wild and remade life on Earth into a dreary (but awesome) Cronenbergian wasteland full of fleshy droids, bioluminescent critters, and trees whose spores try to suck out your internal tissue while you sleep — Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper’s “Vesper” has already drawn several comparisons to the likes of “Stalker” and the Andrei Tarkovsky-inspired “Annihilation.” It’s easy to see why.

Told at the somnambulant of a European art film but plotted with the simplicity of a fairy tale, the filmmaking duo’s first feature since 2012’s “Vanishing Waves” offers a dramatically uneven but imaginatively vivid feat of post-apocalyptic world-building that flips the script on so many other stories like it.

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Instead of using a variety of unique details to flesh out its familiar dystopian premise about the tension between a rich society of elites — who’ve barricaded themselves within edenic fortresses known as “Citadels” — and the scavengers they’ve abandoned to the mutant wilderness beyond the city walls, “Vesper” blurs that age-old saga of haves and have-nots into a distant backdrop for something more interested in the flora and fauna that have evolved around it.

If humans can have such a profound effect on nature, what effect might nature have on humanity in return? It’s a profound question that Buozyte and Samper’s film complicates with all sorts of intricate and icky special effects, but it’s also a question that “Vesper” rejects on principle to a certain degree, as well. By the time this highly evocative work of low-budget sci-fi arrives at its eye-opening final scene, the clearest takeaway is that our only hope for survival has been coded into us since the beginning of time.

The story “Vesper” tells is a simple one told in broad strokes but saturated in atmosphere. Raffiella Chapman plays the title character, a headstrong 13-year-old scavenger in the Nausicaä vein who lives deep within one of the endless forests that stretch beyond the Citadels (the film was shot in Buozyte’s native Lithuania). By day she rummages through the ruins of the old world, a scout drone piloted by her bedridden father Darius (Richard Broke) — who controls the device through a fleshy white contraption straight out of “Crimes of the Future,” and speaks to Vesper through it in a choked whisper — always hovering by her side. By night, Vesper tinkers with her DIY biotech projects, trying to engineer a crop that hasn’t been programmed to die after a single harvest.

Sometimes she visits her creepy uncle Jonas ( Eddie Marsan ), who’s reacted to the end of the world by hoarding supplies and inbreeding his way to a mini fiefdom that’s only interested in its own survival. More compelling are the shrouded Pilgrims who seem to abandon their lives at the drop of a hat and wander towards some unknown promised land. Perhaps Vesper’s absent mother has joined their ranks.

Just don’t expect Buozyte, Samper, and Brian Clark’s cryptic (if conservatively structured) screenplay to answer all of its open questions. “Vesper” is animated by its lingering sense of wonder, which is epitomized by the sheer variety of critters and plant life that it puts on display. Not since “Avatar” has a sci-fi movie been so justifiably infatuated with an ecosystem of its own design.

Buozyte and Samper don’t quite have James Cameron’s budgets, but the intricacy of their imaginations is more than enough to overpower a few dodgy CGI caterpillars. I loved the unexplained husks of old tech that can be seen poking out from the fog in the distance — presumably relics from some of humanity’s previous attempts to engineer their way towards a better world.

Closer and in squirmier detail are the little snake-weasels that burrow out of the ground for a nibble of someone passing by, and the Birdo-like spore guys that latch onto a high-status blonde woman named Camellia (Rosy McEwen) once the cruiser she’s on crash lands between Citadels. When Vesper finds her, Camellia offers the girl and her father access to the cities above if they help her get home, but it isn’t long before Jonas catches wind of the news that someone of vast wealth and knowledge has plummeted into his backyard. And he comes with some lore of his own, including an overcomplicated seed-trading business and a humanoid “jug” (Melanie Gaydos), who he encourages his brood to treat like a disposable robot without any feelings just because she was made in a lab. This only seems like a strange aside until the moment it suddenly doesn’t.

“Vesper” thrives in the moments between moments, when the film’s generous running time gives viewers the chance to sink into its semi-synthetic world of tomorrow. The actual story beats are considerably less satisfying, despite every performance hinting at rich layers of meaning and possibility the movie never has the chance to explore (Chapman in particular makes a believable lead, the young actress allowing Vesper’s rugged optimism to shine through even the most harrowing scenes).

While the world-building is extraordinary, the part of it we get to see is rather small, and this movie often feels stuck in place as a result — spinning its wheels into the forest bed and waiting to go somewhere. The moments during which “Vesper” is effectively able to dramatize the ideas that it so vibrantly exudes are few and far between, although Vesper’s hope (and the maternal bond that develops between she and Camellia) helps give shape to the story and provide for a handful of heartrending moments.

Most crucial is the hard-won hope they kindle within each other, evidence of which is baked into every damp and verdant corner of this movie. “Oh Vesper,” Jonas tells her, “you don’t know the cost of dreams.” But one look at her surroundings is all it takes to understand that she knows the cost of losing them.

IFC Films will release “Vesper” in theaters and on VOD on Friday, September 30.

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‘Afraid’ Review: Hey Siri, Don’t Kill Us

A family surrenders control of its life to artificial intelligence with predictably dire results — for this movie’s viewers.

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A family gathers, holding each other in a dark room, with light shining on them.

By Elisabeth Vincentelli

Curtis and Meredith (John Cho and Katherine Waterston) should have had their spidey senses tingling when their new digital assistant, AIA, dismissed one of its competitors with a breezy “Alexa, that bitch?”

Instead, the couple and their three children, all of whom are endowed with a mix of entitlement and shopworn neuroses, give AIA (pronounced Aya, and voiced by Havana Rose Liu) the keys to their lives. The new gizmo is more than convenient, you see — AIA, which sees and hears everything, anticipates then solves everybody’s problems.

Watching any movie in which artificial intelligence goes rogue (and there are a lot), it’s hard not to think that humankind is rushing to its doom because we were too lazy to manually turn on a light or pick a song. But before we get to the age of the machine, films like Chris Weitz’s limp techno-thriller “Afraid” are attempting to ring an alarm bell.

As AIA takes control of every aspect of its new household — the movie feels as if it’s set five minutes into the future — it quickly becomes obvious that this assistant wants to be the boss. This scenario’s predictability could be forgiven were the movie effective on any level, but it just isn’t, from Cho and Waterston’s wooden performances to jump scares that would not startle Scooby-Doo.

Early on, Meredith drops a reference to HAL 9000, the malevolent computer from “2001: A Space Odyssey .” This suggests an awareness of the dangers of ahead, but does she change her behavior? Of course not: Unlike AIA, these humans don’t learn.

Afraid Rated PG-13 for the occasional bad word. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters.

‘Vesper’ Film Review: Quietly Dazzling Sci-Fi Drama Creates a New Kind of Genre

Karlovy Vary Film Festival: This European-made, English-language production mixes modern young-adult fiction with the rhythms of the European arthouse

Aglow in earth tones and abundant with retro-futurist designs, the sci-fi drama “Vesper” certainly feels like a throwback. But a throwback to what? While the postapocalyptic tale reflects sci-fi strands both East and West, echoing cerebral fare from the Soviet bloc as much as grimy Hollywood spectacles, filmmakers Kristina Buožytė and Bruno Samper have woven those older threads into something wholly unique — at once modern and timeless, nostalgic for a genre only just created, already pining for images freshly cast up on screen.

Making its world premiere in competition at the 2022 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, this wistful, bio-punk fairy tale builds around the broad contours of modern young-adult fiction and shades them with the unhurried, observational rhythms of the European art-house. From the rebellious young prodigy to the focus on class division to the expository wall of title cards that introduce this particular dystopia, the film plays with many familiar while trading the relentless narrative rush of contemporary Y.A. for the ambient woodland menace and darker psychological shadings of the original Grimm fables.

Working with co-screenwriter Brian Clark, Buožytė and Samper have constructed a dense dystopian mythology, rooted in ecological collapse and a corresponding economy built around genetically engineered seeds (and other more ethically dubious inventions). In function and form, “Vesper” explores the periphery, focusing on moods instead of percussive narrative beats as it follows a father and daughter living on the outskirts of this imagined society.

Vesper (Raffiella Chapman) is a 13-year-old who lives with her bedridden father just beyond the Citadel, cast in the shadow of this techno-feudal Promised Land without ever benefiting from the comforts within. That’s all the same for the girl, who never knew a different life, and who spends her days ravaging for scraps and developing her own biogenetic green thumb. Papa Darius (Richard Brake) sees things more clearly. Physically inert and hooked into a particularly Cronenbergian iron lung, Darius has transferred his consciousness to a gyroscopic drone that hovers around his young daughter, signaling his apprehensions in a voice that never rises above a whisper – much like the overall film.

Like its flagship visual element – that drone, worn down and beat up, with a crudely drawn smiley face painted on the surface and an interior seemingly made of human cartilage – “Vesper” luxuriates in landscapes that mix practical and digital VFX to evoke a futuristic world gone to seed. Even as the narrative builds, introducing conflict by way of a sinister neighbor and a pair of Citadel dwellers crash-landed in the forest, directors Buožytė and Samper maintain a low-and-steady thrum, making each frame a showcase for inspired biotech production design that somehow erases the line between organic tissue and synthetic material.

The neighbor, Jonas (Eddie Marsan), is a Fagin-like hawker who hoards lost youth and sells their blood for seeds. He treats Vesper differently from the other wasteland wastrels, though just what prevents this otherwise unscrupulous adult from forcing the girl into his vampiric scheme only becomes clear later. Hitting that darker pitch found in the original Grimm stories, “Vesper” accents the dangers of childhood, tapping a heightened vulnerability in the girl and her father figures.

That theme only deepens when Vesper discovers a crashed aircraft with two Citadelians inside. Young Camellia (Rosy McEwen) is well enough to escape and convalesce at the family home; her guardian, Elias (Edmund Dehn), is so badly mangled that she stays behind.

Vesper and Camellia both have infirm parents, and both were left to fend for themselves – and yet they couldn’t be more different. To call Vesper a tomboy would be a misnomer; as written, clad and performed, the character is a pre-adolescent child of the Earth, essentially gender neutral with an androgynous name and affect (that others refer to Vesper using she/her pronouns is really the character’s sole gender indicator).

With locks so blond as to nearly be shock white and ethereal features accented under permanent mask of makeup, Camellia, on the other hand, instantly reads as high femme. The subtle age difference serves as another point of ballast: Camellia can be no more than a few years Vesper’s senior, still a child in so many ways, just on the other side of puberty – which gives the character’s delicate femininity a harrowing resonance when her true nature (and thus the true nature of her parental relationship) is revealed.

We will say no more, and for that matter, neither will the filmmakers, who deliver glimpses and intimations, creating dazzling otherworldly visuals without a hint of bombast. A Franco-Lithuanian-Belgian production, “Vesper” is an English-language film that aims for the international market, which means the narrative does pick up steam and build toward a dynamic release of tension – an action finale, in other words.

But even in that mode, the filmmakers give priority to the unconventional, staging chases and showdowns with an emphasis on dread (and a look book pulled from 1970s Italian horror). Not wholly cerebral nor fully a spectacle, “Vesper” takes the best of both, tapping into a distinctive wavelength and inviting the viewers along for the ride. Call it Vibe Sci-Fi.

IFC will release “Vesper” in the United States on Sept. 30.

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Vesper review: an imaginative sci-fi adventure

Vesper does a lot with a little. Despite being made on an obviously lower budget than most other modern sci-fi movies , the new film from directors Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper takes place in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic world that feels more well-realized, vivid, and imaginative than any of Hollywood’s current cinematic universes do. While its premise doesn’t do much to sell Vesper as a unique entry into the dystopian sci-fi genre, either, it doesn’t take long for its fictional alternate reality to emerge as a striking new vision of the future.

The film’s opening shot throws viewers headfirst into a swampy, gray world that seems, at first, to be perpetually covered in fog. It’s an image that makes Vesper ’s connections to other industrialized sci-fi films like Stalker undeniably, palpably clear. However, once Vesper escapes the foggy wasteland of its opening scene, it begins to flesh out its futuristic reality with rich shades of greens and colorful plants that breathe and reach out toward any living thing that comes close to them. While watching the film does, therefore, often feel like you’re being led on a tour through an industrial hellscape, it also feels, at times, like a trip down the rabbit hole and straight into Wonderland.

Much like the land that Alice famously fell into, Vesper ‘s dystopian future contains wonders both terrifying and comforting. Set during a period that is only referred to by the film’s opening crawl as the “New Dark Ages,” Vesper takes place in a reality where the Earth was long ago transformed by various biological and genetic experiments gone awry. These experiments, we’re told, were conducted in the hopes of preventing the planet’s ecological collapse. Instead, they merely accelerated it, sending the world and all of its inhabitants tumbling into a reality where trees expand and shrink with every breath they take, plants move, and synthetic, multi-colored slugs lurk beneath the Earth’s permanently swampy floor.

In the aftermath of the world’s off-screen collapse, humanity was essentially divided into two groups: the privileged elites who get to live within tall, encased structures known as “Citadels” and those who have to make ends meet in the wilds of the film’s dilapidated Earth. Vesper (Raffiella Chapman), the film’s eponymous lead, is a member of the latter group. Fortunately, Chapman’s Vesper has become quite adept at surviving in even the harshest of environments by the time that Buozyte and Samper’s film catches up with her. Vesper ‘s opening sequence even sees its young heroine overcome several obstacles in order to save the life of her paralyzed father, Darius (Richard Brake), who uses a telepathic link to communicate with her via a flying drone that accompanies his daughter everywhere she goes.

Vesper and Darius’ lives are thrown into complete disarray, though, when the former unexpectedly stumbles upon an unconscious woman named Camellia (Rosy McEwen) in the woods. Vesper takes in Camelia, a stranger from one of the nearby Citadels, in the hopes that she might be able to help Vesper finally escape the creaky old house that she and her father have lived in for too long. What Vesper doesn’t realize, however, is that Camelia is secretly involved in a conspiracy that not only puts some very dangerous targets on their backs but also catches the attention of Vesper’s abusive, controlling uncle, Jonas (Eddie Marsan).

Vesper , notably, takes its time getting into the conflict that led to Camelia’s chance encounter with Chapman’s resourceful young survivor. The film’s script, which Buozyte and Samper wrote with Brian Clark, largely prioritizes atmosphere and world-building over plot progression. That means the first 30 minutes of Vesper are more concerned with setting up the film’s futuristic world, as well as its young heroine’s place in it, than they are with generating conflict. For some viewers, this may result in Vesper moving too slowly than they would have liked.

That said, it’s easy to see why the film’s creative team was more interested in Vesper ‘s intricate sci-fi world than in its straightforward and predictable story. Not only are many of the film’s plot twists fairly obvious and easy to predict, but Vesper ’s limited production budget also prevents it from making its third act as action-packed as its story demands. As a result, while there’s never a moment when Vesper truly loses hold of its viewers, the film’s measured pace and ultimately subversive finale do make the smallness of its scope unavoidably clear.

Within the film itself, both Eddie Marsan and Richard Brake help bring a sense of on-screen authority to Vesper . Marsan, in particular, is exceptionally well-cast as Jonas, a man who takes immense pride in the crude ways he’s managed to carve out a space for himself in Vesper ’s dystopian world. Opposite him, Raffiella Chapman turns in a youthful but quietly assured performance as Vesper, one that manages to highlight her character’s innate, childlike innocence without ever short-changing her abilities or intellect.

Additionally, while Vesper ’s smaller production budget does frequently prevent Buozyte and Samper from exploring the film’s story as deeply as they probably would have liked, the directors do still manage to fill it with consistently memorable images. One brilliantly inventive scene even follows Vesper and Camelia as they climb onto different chairs and tables in order to avoid touching a biological weapon that takes the form of a yellow mold that rapidly spreads and covers everything it comes into contact with.

The sequence in question calls to mind similar moments in movies like Minority Report and Annihilation , and the fact that Vesper is even able to seem reminiscent of those films is a further testament to its ability to transcend its own financial constraints. For a film that ultimately isn’t able to take its own plot as far as it probably should have, Vesper still manages to tell a visually striking and imaginative story, which is more than can be said for many of Hollywood’s recent sci-fi blockbusters.

Vesper is now playing in theaters and on VOD.

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What the emotional ending of Vesper actually means

While not the tidiest resolution, the ending of Vesper includes a moving lesson about seeding hope for the future.

If you needed to improve your life, would you leave in search of a better one? Or would you try to make the life you already have better?

That dilemma drives Vesper , the beautiful biopunk film from writer-directors Kristina Buožytė and Bruno Samper.

Set in a distant and dark future after Earth’s ecosystems collapsed, a teenager named Vesper (Raffiella Chapman) cares for her ailing father when a strange encounter puts her on the path to finding a new and life-saving food resource.

While Vesper ’s worldbuilding is complicated — and often takes a backseat to the movie’s drama — it leads to an emotionally enriching ending. The message is that, despite overwhelming odds, we can still seed hope for a bountiful future that will benefit all humanity. Even when things are so bad they feel hopeless, Vesper says that all we need to do is look harder within.

Warning: Spoilers for Vesper ahead.

Raffiella Chapman stars in the tender sci-fi drama Vesper , about a post-apocalyptic Earth where seeds are the key to renewing humanity’s future.

In Vesper , one of the key problems facing Earth’s desolate ecology is failed genetic technology. Oligarchs hide behind cities called “Citadels” and sell seeds that are, according to the prologue, “coded to produce only one harvest.” People starve for long periods, and survive on a dwindling supply of food.

Vesper, a farmer and amateur hacker, conducts experiments that could reverse all of humanity’s woes. Early in the film, Vesper sneaks into her uncle Jonas’ (Eddie Marsan) farm, where she steals a stash of “germinating seeds.”

She then uses these seeds for an experiment involving samples from the synthetic Camellia (Rosy McEwen). While studying the samples, Camellia plays a tune from a musical instrument that causes the “locked” bacteria in the seeds to unlock. While the science is dubious and Vesper doesn’t do a phenomenal job of explaining all this, the point is that Vesper finds a way to “unlock” Citadel seeds. “I can make them fertile,” she says. “We’ll never starve again.”

This also explains why Camellia and her human maker, Elias (Edmund Dehn), were fleeing a Citadel where they were wanted, and attempting to reach another. Camellia held the key to altering seeds, and Elias hoped to trade this knowledge for safe passage into another Citadel.

At the end of the movie, both Vesper’s father and Camellia sacrifice themselves so Vesper can escape the pursuit of Citadel forces. Distraught, Vesper buries the altered seeds, believing there’s no use for them in a world without her loved ones. But when a small group of children find her, Vesper changes her mind. It’s still worth fighting for the future.

Together, Vesper and the children journey to a makeshift tower built by an outcast society of nomads. Vesper climbs the tower, symbolically demonstrating her ascension in this desolate world, and lets the seeds be scattered to the wind. Vesper has let go of the past, and planted the seeds that will save humanity.

Vesper explores a future where the ecosystem has been ravaged, leaving humanity to live off genetic seeds that produce limited harvests. Vesper, however, finds a way to “hack” the seeds.

Much of Vesper relies on arthouse stylings, using abstract symbolism and visual metaphors more than plain-eyed plot resolution. What allows the movie to succeed is a combination of Buožytė and Bruno Samper’s empathetic directing, Chapman’s engaging performance, a breathtaking final shot by cinematographer Feliksas Abrukauskas, and the stirring score of French composer Dan Levy.

These elements swirl together into a finale that isn’t all about cleaning up plot points, but imparting an important lesson: Our bleak present need not decide our future.

Vesper is out in theaters and VOD on September 30.

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‘Vesper’ Is a Melancholic Fairytale Set Within a Hostile Dystopia | Review

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Vesper turns ecological disaster into a melancholia-tinged world of low-fi sci-fi and haunting isolation in a desolate place. It’s also not the first time that screenwriters Kristina Buožytė and Bruno Samper have tapped into twisted science to craft a very uneasy narrative that examines humanity and what it means to be human.

At its core, Vesper feels like a dark fairytale, like something born from the haunted tales of Grimms' Fairy Tales . Part of this aesthetic is due in part to the somber, post-apocalyptic landscape built amid the forests and fields of Lithuania, while the other can be attributed to its titular star ( Raffiella Chapman ) looking like the picture-perfect young protagonist from every fairytale, coming-of-age in an inhospitable and dangerous world.

Vesper is largely left alone to fend for herself and her bedridden, half-dead father Darius ( Richard Brake ) who is able to accompany her throughout most of the day as a hovering drone that carries his consciousness within it. Though the functionality of this science is faulty at best, easily hampered by marauders stealing power from their supply, Vesper’s carelessness in storing reserve power, and the cruelty of makeshift leaders. While she may not be entirely isolated, those living nearby—including her uncle Jonas ( Eddie Marsan )—are far from outside sources of care and protection. The planet is not just inhospitable, its remaining people are too.

RELATED: 'Vesper': Release Date, Cast, Trailer, and Everything We Know So Far

In a world left to ruination, the common man is left to make do in the wreckage, while wealthy oligarchs sit somewhere beyond the forests in citadels. Vesper doesn’t delve too deeply into these grand spaces, but the envy and hatred is palpable from every character that mentions them and whatever tensions exist between them. Jonas has made a life for himself as a self-important leader of sorts that uses child labor to run his farm—in addition to humanlike AIs called “Jugs” that they sorely mistreat. Vesper’s outlook on life, citadels, and genetic modification alters forever when she comes across the crash site of a father-daughter duo traveling from the citadels, and circumstances force Vesper to not only work alongside Camellia ( Rosy McEwen ), but to trust her with her future.

As Vesper ’s director, Buožytė has a keen eye for crafting a compelling visual scene from the shimmering, jellyfish-like plant life, to stomach-churning body horror, and smart use of light, there’s never a moment that leaves you wishing for something more intriguing to watch. Vesper is a film that knows when to utilize VFX to show the full breadth of Earth’s future devastation, while staying grounded in the reality of human-made horrors. The dangerous flora and fauna are far less terrifying than human depravity and an innate desire to control.

I have a soft spot for indie sci-fi films like Vesper ; there’s nothing more thrilling than seeing what people can craft outside the tentpole sci-fi IPs, especially when their ingenuity has a budget that prevents extravagant and gratuitous CGI-fests. Sci-fi is at its best when everyday objects are turned into artifacts of ages past, tarnished by the misdeeds of humanity. While Vesper ’s story may be lacking in areas where I was hoping to find deeper meaning, its production design is something to marvel at. Earth’s ecosystem has collapsed and those in power have exploited what remains, and the scenery left behind is a feast for the eyes. Cast in shades of earthy hues, nature’s splendor is set in the background with salvaged metals and rough textures making up the foreground.

The issue with Vesper is that there are a lot of really interesting concepts that simply cannot come to fruition in two hours. The Jugs are a fascinating concept that are unfortunately only half pursued, even with the subplot introduced at around the one-hour mark. The downfall of society is only really hinted at, never addressed head-on, which mostly works, but also leaves much to be desired. The strange, bioengineered plants and genetics are a novel concept that could easily spawn an entirely separate feature-length film, especially with Vesper’s own impressive studies and discoveries. It’s clear that Buožytė, Samper, and Brian Clark have a deep passion for this specific niche of sci-fi, though that passion came to a head with too many good ideas all at once. But even still, it doesn’t lessen how impressive Vesper is as an exploration of the junction of scientific discovery and a greed-fueled ecological disaster.

While Vesper may have weak spots, Chapman is far from one of them. She shines as Vesper, carrying the full weight of a young girl forced to grow up and become a caregiver in an uncaring world. She balances her humanity and heart gracefully as she is met with desperate, tragic moments that could tip the scales of her own soul. As much as Vesper is about a world torn apart by ecological disaster, it is equally about a young girl torn apart by personal, man-made disaster that forces her to rise to a place above it all.

Vesper comes to theaters and VOD on September 30.

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‘The Rings of Power’ Makes ‘Lord of the Rings’ a Boring Slog in a Lifeless Season 2: TV Review

By Alison Herman

Alison Herman

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Robert Aramayo as Elrond; Morfydd Clark as Galadriel

Sitting down to write this review of ‘ The Rings of Power ‘ Season 2, I could think of a few memorable moments. A swarm of butterflies coalesces into a humanoid figure. A choir of singers communes with the earth in gorgeous harmony. A horde of spiders closes in on a helpless prisoner, their lair so fetid you can practically smell it.

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Other successful prequels, like “Better Call Saul” and — yes — “House of the Dragon,” have doubled down on a sense of tragedy, using that shared knowledge to stress the futility and self-defeating nature of its characters’ actions. But “The Rings of Power” wants to be lighter and altogether more wholesome than these decidedly not family-friendly peers. That’s the prerogative of showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne, as well as their corporate sponsors; it’s also in keeping with the source material, which began as a children’s novel with “The Hobbit.” Avoiding those themes still places even more weight on character development and other means of holding our attention — and that’s where “The Rings of Power” continues to fall short.

The most compelling strain of Season 2 is, in fact, the grimmest. Having abandoned his disguise as Halbrand, the human King of the Southlands and Galadriel’s ally, Sauron is now posing as Annatar, a supposed emissary of the godlike Valar. In this form, Sauron preys on the vanity and naiveté of elven smith Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) to manipulate his target into manufacturing the Rings. The trio of objects made last season are a success, saving the Elves from decay and giving their new wearers clairvoyant powers. Sauron builds on that triumph to cajole Celebrimbor into a much riskier endeavor: crafting rings for dwarves and even men, with Sauron on hand to corrupt the process and thus its final results. The One Ring is still a gleam in Sauron’s fiery, all-seeing eye, but we’re well on the road to its origin.

This storyline is a study in evil’s insidious corruption, sowing seeds of distrust and greed among the good. Edwards plays Celebrimbor’s mounting paranoia with affecting self-doubt, and in Khazad-dûm, Prince Durin (Owain Arthur) and his wife Disa (Sophia Nomvete) contend with a ring’s negative influence on the newly covetous and risk-taking King (Peter Mullan). The inexorable decline of Middle-earth, with dwarves and elves losing ground to orcs and men, is all the sadder for how effectively “The Rings of Power” illustrates the majesty of what’s at stake.

But “The Rings of Power” sets this resonant conflict amid a dense thicket of lore that remains impenetrable to outsiders, a group that includes anyone without the time or inclination to delve into Tolkien’s deep cuts. A prologue shows an earlier iteration of Sauron, played by “Slow Horses” star Jack Lowden in a jarring cameo, facing an orc rebellion led by Adar (Sam Hazeldine, previously Joseph Mawle), who engineered the eruption of Mount Doom and establishment of Mordor in one of Season 1’s breakout episodes. I could not tell you why these two parties are at odds, nor why Sauron chooses not to reveal himself when he ventures into Mordor in the premiere before changing course for Celebrimbor’s home base.

Rather than a thrilling sense of discovery, “The Rings of Power” instead instills a bleary disorientation, like you’ve shown up to a college lecture without doing the required reading. Perhaps this confusion is a matter of user error, though anecdotally, I’m hardly alone. When I told a family member I was reviewing this season, they expressed surprise they hadn’t heard of a show set in Middle-earth. We soon realized they had watched the entirety of Season 1 and forgotten not only the details, but its very existence.

The difficulty “The Rings of Power” has in communicating stakes or basic mechanics is directly related to its difficulty in creating fictional beings with distinctive traits and memorable quirks. Sauron is one of the most iconic villains in popular culture, but in this telling, he’s no more interesting as a poker-faced sleeper agent than he was as an offscreen presence looming over Season 1. Protagonists hew closely to archetypes created by either Tolkien (naive young hobbits on a quest with a wizard) or the collective consciousness (the strong female character , a trope that fits this younger Galadriel to a tee). Season 2 includes multiple forced, abrupt romances, and more of the wooden dialogue — “Strange how that which is left behind can be the heaviest burden to carry” — that keeps the viewer at a remove. I remain more aware I’m meant to find the harfoots charming than I’m actually charmed by their antics. Nomvete’s Disa comes closest to fulfilling her assigned role of Fun Provider, but the rest of the show remains a dutiful homage devoid of spark or surprise.

Amazon preceded the series premiere of “The Rings of Power” with one of the more obtrusive, omnipresent marketing campaigns in living memory. That strategy has since been scaled down; when my laundry detergent arrived the other day, the package was missing a branded advertisement for Prime’s flashiest IP. Perhaps the series’ platform has started to acknowledge the show’s limited appeal. If you’re the kind of person who’s excited to meet Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear), the folksy, whimsical spirit excised from the Jackson movies, “The Rings of Power” is made for you. If you’re not, it isn’t — and it’s no longer even attempting to convince you otherwise.

The first three episodes of “The Rings of Power” will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on Aug. 29, with remaining episodes streaming weekly on Thursdays.

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VESPER (2022) [Grimmfest 2022 Review]
Vesper review: A gorgeous sci-fi thriller with an apocalyptic heart
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COMMENTS

Vesper is a great little budget sci fi : r/movies
Vesper is a great little budget sci fi. Recommendation. This movie just came out and wow I'm totally blown away. Only a $5m budget but looks like it could have been $50m easily. Great practical effects and use of CGI when appropriate. Amazing world building with some beautiful landscapes, reminds me of the half life 2 universe with its weird ...
Question and discussion about Vesper (2022) [SPOILERS] : r/movies
Question. Hi there. I saw Vesper yesterday, and I somehow liked the overall movie in general. I actually don't think it deserves the 5.9 rating on IMDB, but it is not a perfect movie. The production design is awesome, all the weird fungi like tree stuff and practical effects on the nature looks awesome and gave me an Annihilation vibe.
Vesper. Thoughts on this film? : r/scifi
Movies are our lives! DVD and Blu-ray collectors share pictures of their latest buys and pickups, pictures of their entire collection shelves, we have contests for FREE DVDs, Movie Party nights (watch a movie with 15 strangers), experts give advice and help find the best deals, and more!
Vesper movie review & film summary (2022)
Vesper is a survivor and her actions and relationships reflect her emotional fragility, pragmatic cynicism, and abiding naiveté. Any given conversation has the potential to erupt in violence. That makes a lot of sense in a world where the remaining humans are surrounded by poisonous or parasitic wildlife. Everyone uses everything, which puts ...
Vesper review: A gorgeous sci-fi thriller with an apocalyptic heart
Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper's first movie since 2012's Vanishing Waves is a stunner, in part due to terrific, horrifying Cronenbergian special effects. Raffiella Chapman and Eddie Marsan ...
Vesper (2022)
Rated 5/5 Stars • Rated 5 out of 5 stars 09/30/22 Full Review BJ M Damn, was Vesper an unexpected awesome movie! Subtle, quietly powerful, totally original and sublimely acted. Totally ...
Vesper
Full Review | Jan 9, 2023. The film's storyline is stretched thin at a few points, mostly because all of it takes place in this post-apocalyptic forest and they have to figure out how to give her ...
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The first half drags at it sets the table for the steady beat of limbs and necks being detached at the end. Eric and his love, Shelly (played by an uneven FKA Twigs), meet in a rehab prison for wayward youth that is so well lit and appointed that it looks more like an airport lounge where the cappuccinos are $19 but the Wi-Fi is complimentary.. Eric is a gentle loner — tortured by a past the ...
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John Cho stars as Curtis, a marketing expert whose boss (Keith Carradine, presumably needing something to do while waiting for a new Alan Rudolph project to come together) assigns him to a new client, a digital assistant dubbed AIA (voiced by Havana Rose Liu) that has been designed, with the aid of incredible advances in artificial intelligence, to not only bring order to the lives of its ...
Vesper Movie Review
The movie's plot is sophisticated and cerebral, and the script assumes that viewers are, too -- it doesn't dwell in explanations. The intense violence isn't gratuitous, but it is realistically blunt for the circumstances. For teens mature enough to embrace the storytelling, Vesper is a mind-blowing marvel, and the character herself is a ...
Vesper (2022)
Vesper: Directed by Kristina Buozyte, Bruno Samper. With Raffiella Chapman, Eddie Marsan, Rosy McEwen, Richard Brake. Struggling to survive with her father after the collapse of Earth's ecosystem, 13-year-old Vesper must use her wits, strength and bio-hacking abilities to fight for the future.
'Vesper' Review: A Resourceful, Richly Built European Sci-Fi ...
Vesper's living laboratory of intricately shaped hybrid plants — shimmying and shimmering like jellyfish, in soft fluorescent shades that sing against the autumnal rot of the surrounding ...
can i get a review of vesper (2022)? : r/scifi
hmm, well roadside is my all time fav scifi book. thx! I thought it was boring. The sci-fi element of the story wasn't that strong, it mostly could have been stripped away and been another generic post apocalyptic movie. The trailer led me to believe it was something else. i can sense that from the trailer.
'Vesper' Review: A Feat of Low-Budget Sci-Fi World-Building
Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper's first movie since "Vanishing Waves" is a post-apocalyptic tale that proves how far imagination can go. Vesper Review: An Evocative Feat of Low-Budget Sci-Fi ...
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'Vesper' Film Review: Quietly Dazzling Sci-Fi Drama Creates a New Kind
Vesper (Raffiella Chapman) is a 13-year-old who lives with her bedridden father just beyond the Citadel, cast in the shadow of this techno-feudal Promised Land without ever benefiting from the ...
Vesper (film)
Vesper (released in France as Vesper Chronicles) is a 2022 Lithuanian-French-Belgian science fiction film [4] directed by Kristina Buožytė and Bruno Samper, starring Raffiella Chapman, Eddie Marsan, Rosy McEwen and Richard Brake. [5] Set in a bleak post-apocalyptic Earth, it follows the titular eponymous 14-year-old girl skilled in biohacking.It was selected to compete at the 2022 Karlovy ...
Vesper review: an imaginative sci-fi adventure
Vesper does a lot with a little. Despite being made on an obviously lower budget than most other modern sci-fi movies, the new film from directors Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper takes place in ...
Vesper (2022) (Sci-fi, Mystery) : r/MovieSuggestions
Vesper (2022) (Sci-fi, Mystery) So, I randomly bumped into the possibility of watching this movie, and reading the description: "Struggling to survive with her father after the collapse of Earth's ecosystem, 13-year-old Vesper must use her wits, strength and bio-hacking abilities to fight for the future. I decided to watch it, and had a great ...
'Vesper' ending explained: What the modified seeds actually mean
Much of Vesper relies on arthouse stylings, using abstract symbolism and visual metaphors more than plain-eyed plot resolution. What allows the movie to succeed is a combination of Buožytė and ...
Vesper (2022) Review
Pressure is applied in the right ways, though some innovation of these problems would've been appreciated. The movie is carefully considered and never feels contrived in the way it lays out obstacles for its characters, making most beats land with impact for the world and the audience. The Technics: Completely outdoing Hollywood has ...
Vesper Review: A Melancholic Fairytale Set Within a Hostile ...
Vesper is a film that knows when to utilize VFX to show the full breadth of Earth's future devastation, while staying grounded in the reality of human-made horrors. The dangerous flora and fauna ...
Vesper movie 2022 review: ticket or skip it : r/scitrek
Welcome to Scitrek your Scifi TV and Movie Channel - Official Subreddit for Scitrek on Youtube - Breaking Stargate news because nobody else will! Vesper movie 2022 review: ticket or skip it. I hated this movie so much. I just wanted it to end. 59 subscribers in the scitrek community.
'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' Season 2 Review ...
Sitting down to write this review of 'The Rings of Power' Season 2, I could think of a few memorable moments. A swarm of butterflies coalesces into a humanoid figure. A swarm of butterflies ...
VESPER Movie Review (2022)
VESPER hit theaters and On Demand September 30, 2022. We covered it on the Find Your Film podcast and this is our Video review of the feature.This is one of ...

Vesper gives the apocalypse a pretty face and an ugly heart

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