Vesper

That creepy mushroom/octopus-looking thing plays
absolutely no part in this movie
dir: Kristina Buožytė & Bruno Samper
2022
Vesper. It means evening in Latin, and it’s the first name of the main character here.
It’s the evening of the world, or at least that of humanity. Set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, there aren’t many humans around and most of them aren’t well. Animals are gone, and plant life is abundant, but it’s mutated, and it doesn’t like to be eaten. In fact in a lot of cases it likes to fight back.
I don’t know how many people are left, but out in the wastelands, there’s 13-year-old Vesper (Raffiella Chapman), her paralysed dad (Richard Brake) who can still communicate with her through a floating drone that looks suspiciously like Wilson the volleyball, her vicious uncle Jonas (Eddie Marsen) and his coterie of cruel, in some cases deformed, kids. He also has genetically engineered humanoid slaves they call jugs. Very disturbing. “They” don’t consider them human, but they’re as human as the other scum oppressing and using them.
Vesper spends all her time looking for viable plants or seeds for food and / or looking after her father’s body, which requires bioenergy power sources. She knows her way around the decrepit world they inhabit, with her father’s voice often barking at her to be constantly vigilant to threats.
The opening titles make reference to genetic engineering, which humanity thought would save them from ecological disaster, actually causing the disaster itself, but in Vesper’s hands her strange form of biohacking or gene manipulation gives her a chance to do stuff that everyone else tells her she shouldn’t do.
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