Worth: $14.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Dave Mantel, Julia Barelaan, Yasmin Blake
Intro:
…an entertaining slice of escapist sci-fi.
In the distant future, a virus has wiped out 30 million of the world’s population. The only vaccine is owned by a big pharma company called, er, The Company; a true sign of corporate evil, surely? The Company’s vaccine is more of a treatment plan and is made available to those willing to pay. Naturally, this doesn’t go down well with the downtrodden and a resistance movement is born.
Kill Mode is a prequel to Dutch director Thijs Meuwse’s 2018 film, Molly, but it still has the strength to stand on its own two legs.
David (Dave Mantel) works in an illegal clinic trying to help those who are infected. Once a rebel himself, the past eight years have seen him manage to leave his resistance days well and truly behind. That is, until his former colleagues swing by to see if he wants to get the band back together. One heist later and David finds himself on the run with teenage human bioweapon, Molly (Julia Batelaan).
Molly was an experiment in budget filmmaking, with Meuwse managing to bring a semblance of big screen action on a shoestring. That attitude is here again, albeit with a few more coppers in the bank, with Kill Mode’s visuals and action looking as slick as any other big budget flick.
There’s a real Neill Blomkamp aesthetic to Meuwse’s work and you’ll leave the film truly believing a man can don a mech-suit and punch another man into a wall.
Problems come in the third act when the action fully takes over the plot and we find ourselves stuck in the same faceless abandoned building for 30 minutes. The choice of a limited location for the final smackdown is understandable given the director’s limited means. However, having taken the time to build up the universe of Kill Mode, it ends up feeling like that world is collapsing in on itself, becoming smaller than we anticipated. Additionally, with the plot being overridden by special effects, Kill Mode occasionally starts to feel like a sizzle reel rather than a full-on feature. But that’s a criticism that can be aimed at any superhero film in the last ten years, so your mileage will vary with how much you’re affected come the end credits.
Overall, Kill Mode shows that from big things, little things grow. Meuwse may wear his influences on his sleeve – hello, Star Wars – but to hell with it. Kill Mode is an entertaining slice of escapist sci-fi.
