To Live From The Land
Written Review
Hi everyone and welcome to MyIndie Review Vlog, the
show that gives you spoiler-free reviews of indie films. My name is Asaf Angel from MyIndie Productions.
Today I’ll be reviewing 2019 short post-apocalyptic horror-drama To Live From The Land, written and directed by MyIndie featured artist, talented UK indie filmmaker, DW Hoppson.
Thank you, DW for sharing your film with us.
We are thrown far into a post-apocalyptic future. The world seems to be in constant, turbulent weather. It isn’t clear what befell civilization, but there is a strong impression that something horrible took place and it changed everything.
Emi, a young girl portrayed by Shauna O’Toole is seen struggling to survive this surreal reality, settled in a dilapidated house in what seemed to had once been a farm of sorts.
We see her nurse a bed-ridden non-communicative young man, played by Scott Mcneice. Not long after that, two raggedy looking men, Cullen and Mitchell, played by Mark Timmins and Stephen Humphrey, approach the compound.
Emi orders them away at gun-point, while Cullen pleads for one night’s shelter for the sake of his severely wounded and exhausted friend. Although reluctant, Emi agrees to aid the two men and leads them into a small barn on her land. They are to stay the night to regain some strength, and then leave as promised.
Hoppson built a complex world to facilitate this story and he conveyed it in very clever ways. From the first few shots, we immediately understand that the world of the film is in ruins. Something happened. We don’t know what, but for this story, it is unimportant.
There is an eerie storm in the horizon. Characters look gritty, wearing raggedy clothes. There is a strong sense of food and water scarcity. All this is conveyed by carefully designed visuals and sound, before a single line of dialogue is delivered.
When he did incorporate dialogue, Hoppson did it in a clever way and with purpose. He gave his characters degenerated speech patterns. They talk with limited vocabulary. The communication through spoken language has deteriorated in this world, which is a huge chunk of information that allows us to understand it better. This fairly easy to incorporate element in the film, tells us that the apocalypse was survived by so few people and happened long enough ago, that their English has diminished.
On MyIndie Review Vlog I exclusively review independent films. Because of that I use an entirely different scale to rate them. Independent films are usually made with very little means and it is only fair to judge them differently when in comparison to studio films.
Independent films will almost always lack the hired personnel to make them look, sound and feel like a studio film, so I focus on the essential elements: Story, creative solutions, diligence, audacity, indie spirit, etc.
To Live From The Land threw me off a bit. Here is a film that I know for a fact was made with very little means, yet the result is of an extremely high standard. The look and feel are reminiscent of films the likes of The Book of Eli, Snowpiercer, Terminator: Salvation, and many others of that ilk. This goes to show how well it stands in comparison with higher profile films.
Cinematography, compositions, art-design, editing, colour grading, special effects, sound design, soundtrack: All aspects seemed to have been made by a team of professionals, or so I initially thought. Turns out, DW Hoppson rigorously and meticulously performed most of these tasks himself, as after seeing his web series, Helena’s Gate and now this film, it is clear Hoppson is an alarmingly talented artist with a plethora of skills.
To Live Off The Land gets an 8.5/10 on the Look At Me, I’m A Film Critic scale
The film is currently on a successful festival run, fresh off winning two awards in its first festival: Best Horror and Best Short at the Dereel Independent Film Festival in Australia. Stay tuned for more updates as it continues its festival run and keep an eye out for the up-and-coming Hoppson.
We are taking a short break around the holidays. We will be back with the next episode on the first week of May.
Until next time, keep supporting indie film. Watch, share, spread the word. My name is Asaf Angel, I thank you for tuning into MyIndie Review Vlog!
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