Every indie film — if it’s “indie” enough — is a teachable moment in the sorts of story you can tell with very little money, a catchy conceit and the best assets you have at hand.
Sometimes those assets include “name” actors you’re able to talk into making your film, giving it visibility and cachet. And somethings it’s the locations.
“Permafrost” benefits from striking, snowy Utah settings and access to horses, ATVs and snowmobiles, which to writer, director and star Lenni Uitto, screamed “Ice Age Dystopia.” So he and co-star Rachelle Hardy dreamed up a new ice age where Russians, Russian gulags and bad Russian accents permeate a North America after — presumbly — the Bering Strait has frozen over and allowed Russianism to expand beyond its MAGA base.
The weather gives the film credibility, which the screenplay strips away, one limp cliche after another.
If you’re going dystopian, your future’s got to have bounty hunters. Because even if governments and techological infrastructure has collapsed, you’ll want to “employ” people to guard the gulags, and “loggers” (As in keeping a “log,” or “laggers?”) and hunters to wander the wasteland fetching or killing (and returning their tracking chips) escapees with electronic trackers.
Meat and apparently crackers will still be available, because anyone with a rifle can hunt and crackers will last long after manufacturing and distribution systems have broken down.
So loner James (Uitto) can get by, haunted by the ghost of a teen girl who gives him advice and urges him “Don’t shoot,” every now and then. Maybe she’ll talk him out of killing himself.
James shoots a lot, here. James stabs a lot, too, even after somebody’s apologized for shooting at him, or conked him on the head to rob him.
There’s a little girl (Riley Hardy) that someone is hellbent on tracking down. She’s on the run with her mom (Rachelle Hardy). James takes this assignment from his Boris & Natasha-accented bounty hunt booker and fights his way through (checks notes) “Somali pirates,” and the usual dystopian thugs, uniformed goons and over-made-up cult-gang members calling themselves “White Ghosts.”
He has to admit to the little girl that he kills people. Not that she can’t see that for herself.
“That’s a bad job! You need to get a new one!”
“Permafrost” has some arresting images, but the script is crap and the middling to mediocre acting, directing and general execution of it become more immaterial the crappier it gets.
“Phantom” gunshots extract our hero and the child from some situations. As in “Who fired that perfectly-timed shot to save them THIS time?” Sometimes, we never find out.
Continuity error?
One favorite moment occurs when two women bounty hunters come for little girl Meg, and one drops to the ground after a LOUD rifle report, only to have the other apparently NOT HEAR that and trudge on for several seconds, grabbing the kid, only for a second round to hit her, totally by “surprise.”
It’s not bad enough to prompt a drinking game over idiotic plot blunders, screwy dystopian “logic” no one thought through or Godawful Russian-accented “acting.” When you film an indie in Utah, at the very least you’d like to avoid drinking game prompts.
Rating: unrated, violence
Cast: Lenni Uitto, Riley Hardy, Ariel Dawn, Corey Dangerfield, Kalli Therinae and Rachelle Hardy.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Lenni Uitto. A FilmHub release on Tubi.
Running time: 1:19
