Io (2019)

Too measured and sedate for a post-apocalyptic thriller, yet too barren for a Christopher Nolan-style space and time travel epic, IO appears most akin to The Martian in that it focuses primarily on one person’s grit and resourcefulness to endure and grow plants in an unforgiving place.

IO provides a different take on a familiar premise. The story is intimate in nature, with a plot that highlights the importance of relationships – not just between partners or family members, but relationships in general. Its pacing and lack of urgency betrays the drama though.

Broad themes like staunch hope, and vital human connection, become cheap sentiments, vanishing into air. “IO” isn’t science fiction storytelling distilled so much as it is vaporized.

The dynamic between Sam and Micah shifts the film into romantic melodrama, as lifeless and as chaste as the windswept apocalypse that surrounds them.

IO is dull, it drags, and it’ll beg the question: When will this, all of this, be over?