It takes two-thirds of the film to find out why exactly the apocalypse has broken out in the ethnically diverse Bushwick, one of Brooklyn’s gentrifying neighbourhoods. “I’m from here,” insists Brittany Snow’s Lucy, a blond-haired, blue-eyed, button-nosed civil engineering student who just wants to get to grandma’s house. Still, she must (and does) duck and dodge the masked snipers that spray bullets in her direction – like Lara Croft meets Taylor Swift, flanked by burly ex-soldier Stupe (Dave Bautista). Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion’s action thriller inhabits a videogame perspective, keeping Lucy in frame and moving with her as though she’s an avatar we’re operating. A neat trick, but it gets old fast, much like the constant cacophony of Call of Duty-style gunfire. The film works as a hollow tale of “resistance”, with less of a stake in the politics of collective action than in the visceral business of individual survival.
