Worldbreaker Review – A big bear hug from Luke Evans in this sci-fi survival drama | film

pMaybe it’s just a coincidence, but a lot of action movies these days seem to be about grown men and their daughters or surrogate daughters struggling to survive. Although they are strong and ready to kill, the men involved are also the girls’ “fathers,” protectors and nurturers who train their female offspring to fight as hard as any man in order to survive in a world they may not one day be in themselves. There’s obviously The Last of Us and Stranger Things, but there’s also the recent Jason Statham vehicle Shelter, the upcoming film One Mile: Chapter One, and now Worldbreaker, which has been generating quite a buzz.

With its sci-fi setting centered around monsters called “Crushers” that emerge from the poisoned Earth and can turn humans into a second type of monster (called hybrids), this movie feels a lot closer to The Last of Us, but with its own weird extra explosions and buzzes. For starters, Milla Jovovich has a clearly supporting role as the commander-in-chief of the human resistance and leader of what has become a quasi-matriarchal society (because people with Y chromosomes are more susceptible to infection). Although Jovovich doesn’t have the best talents as an actress, one thing she is good at, as proven in all of the Resident Evil films, is fighting monsters.

But because she’s busy saving the world, she’s the most distant parent in the situation, leaving her husband Luke Evans (known as “Dad” in the same way that Jovovich’s character is only called “Mother” or “Mother”) to raise and protect their teenage daughter Willa (Billie Bullitt). Abi and Willa end up escaping to an uninhabited island where they try not to starve due to how little food there is (global warming and natural disasters have taken their toll). To pass the time and prepare for the inevitable final showdown, Dad forces Willa to run a homemade obstacle course, just like Hopper and Eleven in Stranger Things. It’s as if the typical future parent is the type of coach obsessed with stopwatch timing and protein intake, like all those overinvested parents you see on the sidelines in sports movies, urging their kids that their own lives depend on it. Only here, Dad’s life kind of depends on Willa learning how to decapitate cutters and hybrids.

Pondering what all this means in terms of contemporary notions of masculinity is more interesting than the film itself, which feels like something lifted wholesale from video game culture, with thinly plotted side quests and more world-building than necessary, effectively robbing the main plot of energy. There are many stories among the stories my father tells, many of them about someone or something called Kodiak who may have been a hero or a bear or both, but his connection to this story has not been sufficiently established either way. At least Evans has his own charisma and sympathetic fatherly chemistry with the young Bullitt, and he’s a young actor definitely worth watching. She has an interesting combination of gaming vulnerability and wiry physicality that could take her too far.