Almost all science fiction is in the business of world-building, creating a landscape, setting, period in time or even “universe” where the story takes place. Dystopias engage in world-destroying.

The Polish thriller “The Last Spark of Hope” manages to serve up an arresting, bleak and bitter setting for The End, and do it on a tiny budget — production design exquisitely manages to do more with less.

Throw in a very clever conceit — the limitations of Asimov’s “Laws of Robotics” and the trap of password-protected AI that can’t “prove that you’re not a robot” — and you’ve got the makings for a tight and downbeat “Twilight Zone” episode, or a drawn-out and just as downbeat feature film.

It’s a minimalist post-apocalyptic tale of life after Life on Earth has been canceled. The planet has been so polluted, disease-ridden, pillaged and climate-changed that the fat cats fled it in rockets and the list of those left behind survivors may be down to just this lone 20something in the middle of Poland.

“We were like the Titanic,” Eva narrates (dubbed into English). “Only we knew we were headed towards an iceberg…but nobody wanted to slow down.”

Her army commander father left Eva (Magdalena Wieczorek) on a mountain top, above the “contaminated zone” symbolized by the nuclear power plant in the valley below. It’s still functioning, even though there might be nobody around to use the electricity or pay the bill.

Eva reaches out via radio to “anyone” who might be out there, broadcasting the same thing she spray paints on buildings in the abandoned plant and town nearby — her GPS coordinates — “50 degrees, 8 minutes north, 18 degrees, 51 minutes east.” So far, nobody has made contact.

During The Climate War, Eva’s dad left her with an armed guardian robot named Arthur, who was designed and used as a deadly border defender against climate refugees. Arthur has his limits but can be engaged in wordplay puzzles. Eva jokes with it, even offers to “marry” Arthur, but to no avail.

“Don’t sweat it, Arthur.”

“Robots do not sweat.”

Eva’s solitary existence has her sleeping and working on a “base” consisting of shipping containers, with occasional gas-masked foraging in the nearby town, versions of which we’ve seen in decades of post-apocalyptic thrillers, from “The Omega Man” to “Zombieland” and beyond.

The twist here is the day Eva forgets there’s been a password change at base. Arthur politely demands a password when she returns. She doesn’t have it. He was placed here to protect Eva, but if she can’t give the password, she can’t return to base where safety, food, water and oxygen generators that allow her to tank up when she enters The Contamination Zone for more food are kept.

She can’t survive without that password, or without finding some way around the robot who demands it.

Writer-director Piotr Biedron’s feature filmmaking debut has Eva try compassion, logic and subterfuge to get past this password restriction. His script and his direction of it lacks urgency some of the time, and he could have used “The Martian” as his template for maintaining that and getting creative in Eva’s “work the problem” dilemma.

But the austere production design is so arid it’ll leave your mouth dry. My benchmark for dystopias that show us the ugliest future possible on a budget is 1990’s “Hardware,” and “The Last Spark of Hope” matches that in look and tone.

Wierczorek’s forlorn performance is augmented by an mournful electronic Lukasz Pieprzyk musical score that fits the mood perfectly. And Biedron announces himself as a movie-maker to watch with a solid sci-fi parable that measures up to “good” even if it doesn’t come close to “great.”

Rating: R, violence, profanity

Cast: Magdalena Wieczorek

Credits: Scripted and directed by Piotr Biedron. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:29