Planet X <img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/windows/21/000000/star-half.png"/>

Planet X

What a little oddity this is. Coming in at a tic under 1 hour, it's an electronic fever dream of a film. The premise is that some time in the future humanity is forced to retreat to reinforced bunkers at dawn due to the sun's extreme heat (something like thousands of degrees, if I remember rightly). The opening shows us a group of people racing back to the shelter, heeding the broadcast to get a wriggle on. On the way back, one of the characters knifes another guy in the stomach and we see the blood drift upwards from the wound, as though in very low gravity. It starts as it means to go on.

Once back inside the rudimentary safe room, we meet others in the group via some very French musings. There's a young woman who is attempting to shag everyone else and a Japanese bloke in wooden geta. There's an old fella who seems the sensible anchor, a techy guy who is on the way to discovering the eponymous planet, a theatrical woman who kind of acts as a circuit breaker to events, and a psycho who can't stop fixing an old TV set. Oh, and a cyborg who is there to keep the humans in check (and save the life of one guy who is trying to die).

The dialogue is sparse, obscure at times and occasionally close to pretentious, but it is functional and there's very little that goes to waste - here's where the decision to make it so short pays off. Had the film been much longer, it probably would have outstayed its welcome but ending as it does, all flashing and nebulous (AND WEIRD), it caught me by surprise. The more I think about Planet X, the more I appreciate director Maxence Vassilyevitch's choices. I'm almost certain my reading of the film, especially the finale, is bollocks but I'm glad there are films like this that give you the option to get it wrong.

Incidentally, there was once a bit of conjecture about the possibility of an actual Planet X beyond Neptune and some of the material is wild. The Wikipedia entry is a good enough lifting off point.

See also:

The sun plays havoc in Danny Boyle's Sunshine (2007) and Duncan Jones balances things with Moon (2009).

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