Starring: Toby Goodger, Hannah Khalique-Brown, Duncan Lacroix, Jessica Zerlina Leage, Luke Massy, Tom Gaskin, Alexander Anderson, Emma Cole, Joseph Coleman, King Gayle

Written and directed by Benjamin Goodger

BK Studios, available digitally

Ten years after society’s collapse, scattered remnants of humanity either shelter from the world or prey on each other. Father (Duncan Lacroix), Jake (Toby Goodger) and Girl (Hannah Khalique-Brown) have eked out what existence they can. But when a group of cannibals attack them and steal the medicine Girl needs to live, Luke embarks on a desperate quest across a landscape that wants him dead.

I’m going to rip the band-aid off first here and raise the obvious criticism. Girl isn’t a character, she’s a post it note, an inciting incident rather than an individual. In fairness, most characters in this are and that’s the point. But it’s 2025, and if I never ever see a movie where a woman is either a damsel, a victim, a prize or all of the above again I’ll still have seen hundreds of movies that could have done literally anything else and chose the lowest hanging fruit.

That single choice aside (and Khalique-Brown is great here despite having almost nothing to do), Year 10 proceeds to surprise you almost constantly. Goodger’s decision to shoot silently means you’re denied the comforting tension break of dialogue. Instead, you’re right there with Jake, perennially seconds from death, holding your breath too. That tension is everywhere, and the direction keeps it locked in. There’s a single, swooping drone shot during a panicky chase sequence towards the end and a couple of aerial shots that emphasize just how few people are left. The rest of the time we’re in the woods, with Jake, and just as vulnerable.

Goodger’s commitment extends to the genre too. This isn’t a friendly post-apocalypse, it’s a nightmare that’s one-part Mad Max, one part Stalker and yet all its own. Survival, and life, are rendered down to the smallest, most important choices. Getting a key from hulking Leader (Luke Massy) without waking him up. Choosing the right side of a tree to hide behind. The terrible moment where Luke, and you, realise the cannibals have kidnapped a child. This is a movie about the end of the world. Nothing’s left. Everything matters. Even the search for Girl’s medication is just the search for her latest medication. Fear delayed rather than the polite, tidy resolution of the pre-apocalypse.

That level of commitment is present in the cast too. Toby Goodger’s Luke is panicky, desperate and breaks. He’s fallible, he gets scared, he gets angry, and he gets (barely) lucky. There’s no plot armour here and the fights are carefully built and brutally effective. Luke never, ever feels safe and even the final shot is an audacious moment of ambiguity that tells you what you want to see as much as what you do. Massy too impresses as an implacable, relentless and offhandedly cruel patriarch and everyone registers as an individual, despite the minimalist script and characters. Which makes the moments people start dying even more impactful.

Verdict: Year 10 makes one bad call and a dozen intensely clever successful ones. It’s a post-apocalypse movie that refuses to romanticize catastrophe and finds humanity in the tiniest places. There’s a moment towards the end here, involving some canned goods, that is one of my all-time favourite beats in movies like this and the film shines like this more than once. Demanding, often audacious and mostly very successful. I can’t wait to see what Goodger does next. 7/10

Alasdair Stuart

 

Year 10 is available digitally now.