Tag Archives: Post-apocalyptic

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CAPSULE: HOT SPOT (2026)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Andrzej Konopka, Reika Kirishima,

PLOT: A detective living in a city run by a totalitarian AI, surrounded by wastelands, investigates a murder at a refugee camp and a series of cyberattacks that are accelerating the rate at which citizen’s heads are exploding.

Still from Hot Spot (2026)

COMMENTS: Agnieszka Smoczynska‘s Hot Spot has been getting slaughtered at Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb, but I’m happy to report that, while it’s no The Lure, it’s a perfectly enjoyable, if strenuously unserious, midnight movie, an experience sort of like getting heat stroke at drive-in triple feature of Mad Max, Ghost in the Shell, and ‘s version of Dune. Do not attempt to take it seriously as science fiction; just enjoy the unexpected insanity and oddball directorial decisions, and you should find it a perfectly acceptable meat-and-potatoes weird movie.

Hot Spot‘s world-building is impressive, if frequently frustrating in its refusal to follow up on details. It’s set in a wealthy city surrounded by an endless wasteland, whose residents depend on near-omnipotent AI “the Head” for their abundance. The Head requires its residents to eat a “jellybean” daily and hook themselves into its neural network in order to enjoy the benefits it brings, like telepathy and virtual reality surfing, and it strongly discourages voluntary disconnection (since disconnected citizens can engage in wasteful activities like free thought or masturbation). Aiding the city’s prosperity are a species of caterpillar-like creatures of various sizes, which feed on blood and recycle the dead into water and electricity. Oh, and every now and then citizen’s heads will spontaneously explode for unclear reasons (when not caused by cyberattacks on the Head’s infrastructure, it may to have something to do with mental hygiene, or possibly too much masturbation). The populace views random spontaneous decapitation as a small price to pay in exchange for the necessities of existence, though. It seems everyone is allowed to join the city as long as they submit to the Head and eat the jellybean, which may explain the large refugee camp outside the city gate. The plot begins when our hero, outrageously mulletted, Polish-accented detective Djonny, who married to a Japanese woman who can disconnect from the Head by singing, is assigned to investigate a murder at the refugee camp. There, he encounters a group of (mostly female) nomads who keep half their faces shrouded in hajib-like headdresses, refuse to connect to the Head, and have some kind of undefined, scarcely explored mystical powers. Djonny suspects one of the refugees, Rana (a second-billed but only marginally important Noomi Rapace), as the killer, and also suspects her of being a “cyber witch.” The real culprit will eventually be revealed (and will not be much of a surprise), but in the meantime Rana seems to put some sort of curse on Djonny, which, for reasons which are again entirely unexplained, results in him occasionally turning into a tiger.

There’s also an elf-eared assistant who hangs around in the background doing nothing, and a lot of gratuitous trippy stuff. For arbitrary reasons, the movie sports an 80s aesthetic, even beyond the star’s featured curly mullet, track suit, and smoked sunglasses. The soundtrack proudly features “The Final Countdown” and a cover of “Take My Breath Away,” and the rest of Marcin Macuk and Zuzanna Wrońska’s score oozes retro synth-pop. Overall, Hot Spot‘s post-apocalyptic vibe makes it seem like it was created according to Panos Cosmatos‘ “poisoned nostalgia” technique: a teenage boy’s flawed imagining of a story conveyed by a lurid 1981 VHS box cover.

Many complain that Hot Spot leaves genuinely promising sci-fi concepts by the wayside in favor of meaningless psychedelic trip sequences and showy nonsense. It’s a fair rap, and an easy case to make. But it seems like a serious examination of a dystopian AI-driven cyberfuture is not what Hot Spot aims at. This is still likely the most entertaining and unpredictable movie about a telepathic post-apocalyptic detective in a blond mullet slowly turning into a big cat after an encounter with a cyber witch that you will see all year, and that’s enough to justify a watch. It breezed through theaters like a sirocco, but should hit VOD/streaming soon.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“If ‘Hot Spot’‘s first fifteen minutes are a delightfully idiosyncratic barrage of sci-fi ideas, spinning ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Dune’ and ‘Logan’s Run’ through the Eurotrash lens of ‘Valerian and Laureline,’ its remaining 90 grind through those ideas until the gears slowly screech to a halt. It’s a shame, too, because Smoczyńska managed such an interesting command of tonal strangeness in ‘The Lure’; as self-consciously weird as it was, you followed the emotional truth of what the characters were going through. Here, any thematic coherence gets a bit 404 error, right alongside its plot beats.”–Clint Worthington, RogerEbert.com (festival screening)

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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: LATE AUGUST AT THE HOTEL OZONE (1967)

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Konec srpna v Hotelu Ozon

DIRECTED BY: Jan Schmidt

FEATURING: Beta Poničanová, Ondrej Jariabek, Magda Seidlerová, Hana Vítková, Jana Novaková, Vanda Kalinová, Natalie Maslovová, Irena Lžičařová, Jitka Hořejšías

PLOT: In the wake of a nuclear apocalypse, a group of women wander the desolate landscape in search of life and sustenance, eventually discovering an old man living in the shattered remains of a hotel.Still from Late August at the Hotel Ozone (1967)

COMMENTS: There wasn’t a whole lot of software available for the early iterations of the Macintosh computer, but one of the more popular and memorable programs was a simulated game of diplomacy called “Balance of Power.” As leader of either the United States or the Soviet Union, you were tasked with responding to world events in a way that burnished your own country’s reputation and boxed out your opponent. Of course, this leads to political brinksmanship, with each escalation inching the two powers ever closer to the ultimate conflict. If you misjudged the situation, the game concluded with a black screen that provided a particularly chilling finale: “You have ignited a nuclear war. And no, there is no animated display of a mushroom cloud with parts of bodies flying through the air. We do not reward failure.” It was a real gut-punch to a 15-year-old who only wanted to prevent the USSR from Finlandizing Austria.

I hearken back to this example of video game shaming because it matches the mood set by Late August at the Hotel Ozone. The suggestions of familiar tropes—the post-nuclear landscape, a group of young women fending for themselves, small traces of the world before—set expectations that this film is only too happy to crush. Director Schmidt crafts a stark future with a documentarian’s eye, depicting a world cleaved of hope, where even death loses its power to shock—because there’s nothing else left.

Most of the film is spent in the company of Dagmar, an older woman who recalls the times before the world ended and hopes there might be enough people left to rebuild humanity. In her charge are a group of young women who have learned the fundamentals of survival but have had little opportunity to develop their souls. They don’t say much, but their actions speak volumes. Finding a drum of petrol, they refill their canisters, but then one of them decides to set it on fire, for fun. Another takes the cache of bullets she has found and throws them into the flames, again for amusement. We’re quickly learning that life holds little allure to this group, something reflected in their treatment of animals. A girl rips apart a snake with her bare hands. Another teases a hungry stray dog before killing it with a bullet to the head. When they find a cow that they can kill for sustenance, the women tear at the flesh like ravenous hyenas. (The film’s lore says that none of these animal encounters are faked; if true, we’re also dealing with a snuff film.) Whatever rules we think society should have, they don’t matter here.

So stumbling across the old man at the hotel is like crossing a generational gap. Despite everyone around him having died, Hubert has persisted, maintaining the place in expectation of the day when guests will return as part of a pleasure trip. Dagmar and Hubert find some comfort in their shared experiences, and their very tastes mark them as alien. The girls are repulsed by the idea of drinking milk, and they are clearly baffled by the rituals of a dinner with silverware and candles. Reportedly, several of the performers were not professional actors (one account suggests they were members of the Czech military), and there’s something chilling about their sense of detachment. Hubert’s proudest possession, a Victrola with a recording of “Roll Out the Barrel,” is notable as the one thing that inspires something deeper in the women, a piece of art amidst the desolation. Naturally, it’s more important than life itself. 

While the two old people are our connection to the familiar, the fact is that this is not their world. It belongs to the young women who have inherited the dying wasteland, and the violence that ends the film is woefully inevitable. This is an apocalypse for a reason, and this film takes the position that the world will not end with gut-wrenching action or even tear-stained melancholy, but rather with ignorance laced with id-fueled apathy. If we leave our children nothing, nothing is what they will take to their hearts. There will be no reward for failure.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… this trek though the post-apocalypse wastelands is far more Stalker (1979) than Road Warrior… a bleak film but ultimately a rewarding one.”–Kevin Lyons, The EOFFTV Review

(This movie was nominated for review by marc slavin. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)     

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The End of August at the Hotel Ozone

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    It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, Shorts

    THEY CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: “HEN, HIS WIFE” (1990) / “PÂTÉ” (2001)

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    The penny drops. The scales fall from the eyes. The curtain is pulled back. In any deception, there comes that moment when the delusion must be abandoned and the consequences of prevarication must finally be faced. Today we visit a pair of short films that live in that pivotal moment, and we find that exposing one truth can sometime bring another even darker truth to the surface.

    The couple in Igor Kovalyov’s “Hen, His Wife” has a secret, although neither partner seems to know it. They seem quite settled and content: the wife runs about the house, cooking and cleaning, tending to their pet giant human-headed tardigrade, and generally seeing to all her blue-faced husband’s needs while he sits slumped in an easy chair. Not a well-balanced relationship, to be sure, but everyone seems quite happy. So it’s quite a spanner in the works when a traveling salesman drops by and, in the course of making his pitch to the sedentary man, feels compelled to whisper the awful truth: the wife is actually an enormous chicken. And wouldn’t you know, it’s kind of obvious when you actually stop and look at her. Evidently, the husband never has, and he suffers a complete meltdown, throwing her out and plunging into an emotional doom spiral. Why, the whole thing is enough to make him forget about the ladybugs crawling all over his face.

    Kovalyov’s figures are uniformly grotesque, with misshapen features, huge folds of undulating skin, and unnatural colors. (It turns out to have been perfect training for his later role as co-director of The Rugrats Movie.) In that context, a 6-foot tall hen doesn’t seem such a bad thing to be, and she certainly isn’t the weirdest thing in the apartment. There’s a bitter humor in the way the husband views this whole situation as a terrible betrayal, even though there seems to have been no attempt whatsoever at concealment. That this of all things would be the breaking point is an intriguing conundrum.

    It’s reasonable to view “Hen, His Wife” as an unsubtle metaphor for bigotry, as the husband’s outsized reaction would feel just as harsh if she had been outed as Jewish or an escaped criminal or a fan of Nickelback. Indeed, the salesman doesn’t so much leave as vanish in a puff of smoke, like a pernicious rumor. That might be too much to put on the shoulders of this slight, one-joke cartoon. That said, the wife’s return to see the fate of her beloved husband is authentically sad, and reminds us that love might conquer all, but only if we let it.

    The truth in “Pâté” is obvious to anyone who cares to see it: the world is destroyed. That much is clear to children Otto and Vera ((Ty Arnold and Samantha Browne-Walters), who are dispatched into the wasteland wearing adult-sized environmental suits to harvest cockroaches as the only available food source. Unfortunately for them, their deeply damaged mother (Jane Culley) is living in a fantastical past where she remains the belle of the ball in costumes borrowed from a Jean-Pierre Jeunet production. Her selfishness is such that she will do anything to win the favor of the only man left alive. She’ll genuflect, she’ll dance, and if there aren’t any cockroaches left to serve for dinner, something else—or someone else—will have to do.

    “Pâté” is an accomplished student film, with excellent production values and a well-earned sense of dread. (The short earned attention at Sundance, proving to be the calling card that earned director Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo her sole feature credit, the psychological horror film After.Life.) It doesn’t really rise above its premise, though. For a film set in a future apocalyptic wasteland, there’s surprisingly little satire in “Pâté.” It’s about the dark twist that is foreshadowed early on, but even if you don’t discern where the story will be going (as the quietly grim Otto surely does), you’ll be waiting for that shoe to drop. The vibe is that of a particularly baroque episode of “Tales From the Crypt.” Still, it’s hard to deny that a story about adults reveling in their ill-gotten luxuries while handing the consequences of their sins to their children retains its cultural relevance. You just have to take that walk yourself.

    Like the stubborn bigotry of the hen’s husband, the Mother’s selfish complicity in the ongoing cruelty of the world is troubling to behold. The state of denial will always be a suitable subject for drama, because a truth delayed is never a truth dispatched. It will always be waiting to surface, to pay back the damage with interest.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “Hen, His Wife”: “This 13-minute animation, while engaging, is disquieting enough that one looks forward to its end even as one remains transfixed by what transpires. We would not advise watching it on acid, for though beautifully drawn and narratively intriguing, it is also queerly disturbing on the visual, emotional, and intellectual levels.” – Abraham, A Wasted Life

    “Pâté”: “…a visual tour de force with its no-budget evocation of a once opulent future world.” – Scott Macaulay, Filmmaker Magazine

    (“Hen, His Wife” was nominated for review by Jenn; “Paté” was nominated for review by Eric Smith. Suggest a weird movie or two of your own here.)

    Apocryphally Weird

    69*. FLAMING EARS (1992)

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    Rote Ohren fetzen durch Asche

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    “In the year 2700, the year of the toads, ‘Asche’ was a burnt-out city.
    Too big for its souls who banded together in dark basements.
    It was an unrestrained wild animal,
    ready to pee in Death’s face at any time.
    And its residents were equal to it in every way.
    Highly unlikely for a pure heart to survive.”–Flaming Ears introductory narration

    DIRECTED BY: Ursula Pürrer, A. Hans Scheirl, Dietmar Schipek

    FEATURING: Susanna Heilmayr, Ursula Pürrer, A. Hans Scheirl

    PLOT: The lives of a comic book artist, a serial arsonist, and an extraterrestrial converge when Volley burns down the comix press. The artist, Spy, goes in search of vengeance, only to be beaten up by the bouncers at the club where Volley performs; Nun, Volley’s alien girlfriend, then finds Spy lying unconscious in the gutter and falls in love with her. Meanwhile, Volley develops the hots for her chauffeur, and a young girl graffitis the city with the image of a flower vase.

    Still from Flaming Ears (1992)

    BACKGROUND:

    • Scheirl and Pürrer became lovers in the 1980s and started making “lesbian punk home movies” in Pürrer’s Vienna apartment with a Super 8 camera and homemade props. They would later form the band Sta-Prestto make their own film soundtracks.
    • The Catholic symbolism in the film reflects the predominant conservatism of Viennese society at the time, in contrast to its very small punk scene of musicians and artists.
    • The soundtrack features the music of local punk bands, sometimes even capturing live performances. None of the music was formally licensed.
    • When Scheirl and Pürrer’s films toured women’s and feminist film festivals in the 1990s, the S&M content often proved controversial and sometimes led to walkouts.
    • The then-contemporary popularity of Fluxus theater led some viewers to assume Flaming Ears‘ outrageous style was a deliberate mockery of their performance art. This was not the intention of the filmmakers, who were simply expressing their punk aesthetic.
    • A. Hans Shceirl (Nun), also credited as Angela Hans Scheirl, is a transgender man who transitioned with testosterone in 1996. He later directed the infamous Dandy Dust (1998) and became a painter and professor at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.

    INDELIBLE IMAGE: There’s a lot of eye-catching and provocative imagery throughout Flaming Ears, with a plethora of unusual proclivities on display. But one of its most mysterious moments occurs when the otherwise unknown Blood suddenly shows up out of the blue to grant Spy’s rotting corpse the kiss of life. It’s confusing, oddly touching yet revolting, and emblematic of Flaming Ears‘ fairy tale combination of enchantment and grotesquerie. It’s also a major pivot point in the splintered narrative.

    TWO WEIRD THINGS: Erotic arson; the healing power of alien saliva

    WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: What isn’t weird about this movie? The two items listed above are only the very weirdest elements. There’s also furniture humping (with lighter fluid used as lube), an immortal alien whose severed limbs come back to life, and an oddly suggestive conversation about gardening cacti. With a rough and ready DIY aesthetic, Flaming Ears is art-house done No Wave-style. At any moment the live action can be interrupted by a stop-motion animated sequence, a prop, or a painting. In one memorable scene a cardboard cutout, with a cartoonish line-drawn face, replaces one of the actors. The dialogue is obscurely poetic and the futuristic setting thinly sketched, leaving the viewer on their own to figure out what exactly is going on, like an alien crash-landed on an unknown planet.

    Flaming Ears re-release trailer

    COMMENTS: Usually, films that take place in a future dystopia explain the reasons behind societal collapse, but Flaming Ears ignores Continue reading 69*. FLAMING EARS (1992) →

    Capsules

    CAPSULE: CAR CEMETERY (1983)

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    DIRECTED BY: Fernando Arrabal

    FEATURING: Alain Bashung, , Micha Bayard

    PLOT: A modern-day Messiah emerges as a prophet and musician amongst a crew of outcasts and weirdos in the post-apocalyptic car cemetery of Babylon.

    Still from car cemetery (1983)

    COMMENTS: Everything feels a bit familiar in the beginning. Voice-over verses from John’s Revelation and shots of a desolate hellscape hint at a typical post-apocalyptic genre affair.  Don’t be fooled, however. The director is legendary post-surrealist , who, along with Alejandro Jodorowsky and , established theater and cinema’s infamous “Panic Movement.” This work, a loose adaptation of a former play of the same name, is admittedly not one of Arrabal’s wildest visions; but it is an accessible introductory point to his personal panic aesthetic in cinema, expressed through the incorporation of violent and often blasphemous imagery, deviant sexuality, and elements of social critique.

    The plot takes place in an automobile graveyard where a variety of outcasts take refuge after a major disaster. Milos, a former pimp, is the boss here, using the facilities as a sort of love hotel. Dila, a prostitute with a pure heart, is in his stable. And then there is Emanou, a prophet and subversive musician with a strong following—as well as many enemies. His miracles and his downfall closely follow the passion of Christ, offering a subversive take on biblical motifs and archetypes.

    Every character here is nothing more than a reinterpretation of the the Divine Drama. Emanou, of course, is Christ: that’s clear from the beginning. Milos the opportunist is Pontius Pilate, and Dila recalls Mary Magdalene. The characters Topé and Fodère represent Judas and Peter. Judas’ portrayal is noteworthy; he is a poet and idealist ready to play a despicable, albeit necessary role, even if than means he will dwell in the latrines of history for all eternity. In other words, he is portrayed as the true savior—food for thought for everyone open to revisionist takes on religion.

    Each of Emanou’s miracles have a New Testament counterpart, but extra symbolic elements are also thrown into the mix. Everyone  longs for a bit of rain and for Emanou’s upcoming punk rock concert, seen a path to salvation. Dramatic staging, lighting, and makeup give the production a theatrical feel, while the decor combines elements of classical painting, still lifes, and even pop-art. Jazz, and the aforementioned punk, plus a hint of Latin music, make up the rich soundtrack. And two narrators that appear at key points in voice-over—one male, one female—remind us of the artificiality and the parablistic nature of everything portrayed here.

    All in all, however, this is not one of Arrabal’s boldest works. There isn’t graphic content like in I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse (1973). There is a deviant sexuality, but nothing too extreme. Only the most narrow-minded people could consider this movie sacrilegious. But Car Cemetery will appeal to those interested in alternative takes on biblical narratives—Andrej Wajda’s Pilate and Others (1972) comes to mind for a similarly nonconformist take on the Divine Drama.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: 

    “…a showcase for Arrabal’s penchant for the bizarre… it feels like a strange piece of art for art’s sake, but for some that’ll be reason enough.”–Ian Jane, Rock! Shock! Pop! (“The Fernando Arrabal Collection 2 DVD box set)

    Car Cemetery

    Car Cemetery

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