Director – Mitch Jenkins, Screenplay – Michael A. Dobbin & Guillaume Fradin, Producers – Michael A. Dobbin, Chris Hamilton, Eva Lewcuha & Charles Meunier, Photography – Stuart Howell, Music – Rachel Jamieson, Visual Effects Supervisor – Jean Joel Banbuck, Visual Effects – Frames Focus, Special Effects – Real SFX, Production Design – Stephen Nicholas. Production Company – Peardrop Productions/Plan 9 Pictures/Quiet Revolution Pictures.
Cast
Simon Merrells (Commander Anderson Rigel), Hermione Corfield (Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Hinde), Kemi-Bo Jacobs (Samantha ‘Sam’ Andrews), Darrell D’Silva (Gene Campbell)
Plot
The year 2041. Humanity needs to move out into the stars away from a polluted Earth. The Seed Project has been created to further these goals and management of this has been placed in the hands of the A.I. known as Jay. Commander Anderson Rigel is due to depart for The Moon the next day on the start of a mission out into solar space. He is relaxing at home with his partner Sam Andrews when they are interrupted by Charlie Hinde, one of Sam’s work colleagues. Charlie shows Anderson evidence that Jay has been running a simulation for a mission that lasts 2740 years (or a million days). They then receive a flurry of printouts and even some nanobots through the 3D printer from Jay. They realise that Jay has become vastly more self-thinking than anticipated and is wanting Anderson to abandon his mission for one that will take him into deep space and much further afield. Moreover, Jay has prepared the nanobots as a way of transforming Anderson and carrying itself to the stars.
A Million Days was the third film for British director Mitch Jenkins. Jenkins had previously made music videos for Goth band Fields of the Nephilim and two feature films based on the works of Alan Moore with Show Pieces (2014) and The Show (2020). The script comes from Canadian producer Michael A. Dobbin who has been behind works such as Credo (2008), Eddie the Sleepwalking Cannibal (2012), His Masters’ Voice (2018) and Ravers (2018).
I went into A Million Days blind and was surprised. It becomes an SF film with a grand conceptual reach with big things to say about Artificial Intelligence, nanotechnology and about humanity going to the stars and seeding the galaxy. Things start to become extremely fascinating when the script serves up revelations about first the A.I. running a rogue simulation and then having suddenly invaded Simon Merrells’ home and started printing out plans where it becomes apparent that it wants him to abandon his mission and go on one of much larger scope. It gets to the point where we have the A.I. predicting events that are about to happen with incredible precision just before they end up doing so.
Simon Merrells examines a mysterious nanotechnological substance
A Million Days is comparable in approach to the grand conceptual reach of a film like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). And moreover, it is a film about going to the stars and future human evolution that never leaves its single house location until the very last scene and takes place as a chamber drama among a group of three characters (and one other who turns up for a couple of scenes).
The cast are names that I’ve never heard of before with one exception but give fine performances. The one name that I had heard of was Hermoine Corfield, a young up and coming actress who has give some excellent performances in the likes of Slaughterhouse Rulez (2018), Sea Fever (2019) and We Hunt Together (2020-2), among other works, and is someone who should have a much higher profile than she does. She does well here in a calm, intelligent performance as the buttoned-down, bespectacled intern.
