Director/Screenplay – Perry Bhandal, Producers – Perry Bhandal & Richard Swingle, Photography – Richard Swingle, Music – Alex Gobbet & Adam Harvey, Visual Effects Supervisor – Stefano Torrini, Production Design – Jeff Schell. Production Company – PA Film Developments/Revelator Pictures.
Flynn Allen (Sira), Luke Goss (Jay), Mathilda Freeman (Lily), Jennifer Scott (Jesse), Peter Guinness (Priest), Aneta Piotrowska (Sira’s Mother), Anna Wilson-Jones (Jenna)
It is the aftermath of a mysterious catastrophe. The world has been scoured by winds of possibly alien origin that are attracted to artificial sound and reduce people to dust. Young Sira’s mother is dying. She leaves him with a device that can repel the winds and a map that leads to the place where one’s wish can be fulfilled. After she passes away, Sira sets out on his own. He encounters Lily, a girl his own age, who joins his journey. They are taken in by a priest and his gathering of women followers who want the device that Sira has. Escaping, Sira and Lily are aided by the soldier Jay and Jesse, a former radio astronomer who believes that reverse engineering the device may hold a means of banishing the winds.
The Last Boy was the second film from Perry Bhandal, a British-born director from a Sikh background. Bhandal had previously made the film Interview with a Hitman (2012). On the credits, Bhandal states that the film was inspired by the works of Rumi, a 13th Century Persian scholar whose poetry has been greatly acclaimed because of its apparent insight into the human condition.
Perry Bhandal certainly creates an interestingly different world. The Last Boy sits as a science-fiction film but also has elements of fantasy – a mystic quest for the place where one’s dreams are fulfilled, the possibility to bring people back to life. The setting is some point after society seems to have collapsed and large numbers of people been wiped out due to an unspecified catastrophe – in essence a Post-Holocaust Film. There are mysterious winds, which are of possibly alien origin, that reduce people to dust. The winds are attracted by artificial sound – this seems to hold something of the subsequent hit A Quiet Place (2018), although unlike that film the logical step of survivors maintaining a life where they try to make no noise does not seem to have occurred to any of the characters.
Bhandal creates a certain mystery that keeps the film interesting – the quest for the place where dreams are fulfilled, shades of Stalker (1979); the mysterious winds that reduce people to dust; the importance of Flynn Allen’s device that seems able to drive the winds back; the question of exactly what did strike the world and what has happened to everybody else. Rhandal does get some very nice photography in in places.
The main issue with the film is that Perry Rhandal is operating on a low budget. This means that the mystery winds are represented by no more than some blurred opticals that do not come anywhere feeling like they convey a sense of threat. Also the ending the film reaches where Flynn Allen reaches a point of indecision about bringing his mother or Lily back and simply leaves the field of wishes without doing either feels unsatisfying.
The Last Boy was apparently a modest success and Perry Bhandal has announced a sequel.
Trailer here