World War 3 is between humanity and the Breakers, and humanity is barely holding on. Swarming through the ‘Stitch’, a dimensional rift that opens somewhere else every time it’s closed, the Breakers are fast, almost indestructible and infectious. Get wounded, and you’ll turn into a hybrid, one part human, one part Breaker, living scouts used to find and kill human survivors. Unless you’re a woman. Much harder to turn than men, women have become the front line in the war, led by Mom (Milla Jovovich), the mother of Willa (Billie Boullet) and wife of Dad (Luke Evans). When the Stitch opens again, Mom goes off to lead the counterattack and trusts Dad and Willa to hide out on a nearby island. There, Dad trains his daughter for war, telling her stories of Kodiak, the mysterious god-like figure that leads the human resistance. A figure that may be one of Willa’s parents.

This has got snippy reviews pretty much everywhere and honestly that’s a real shame. And not just because of my usual pathological fondness for stories like this. Worldbreaker genuinely tries, and largely succeeds, to do new things with the format.

First among these is the stories that power the movie. Kodiak is a strange, almost Pan-like figure played in flashbacks by Chris Finlayson. Supposedly the first human to fight and kill a Breaker, he’s either dead or alive, God or human, man or woman. Dad’s stories make him all those things and more, and Willa’s slow interrogation of them is a cleverly handled, subtle exploration of her growing maturity. A lot of people went into this movie wanting answers. What they’re being given is a metaphor that’s also an answer, which is much smarter than movies like this normally are. It works too.

But this is a movie that lives in its cast. Jovovich, the eternal punchline of action actresses, is a cameo here but a very good one. She and Evans have a believable, rounded chemistry and Jovovich’s exhausted, furious general owns the screen every time she’s on it. Evans too, has arguably rarely been better. Dad is coy, ruthless, charming, compassionate by turns. An injured soldier off the field with one last mission: train his daughter to survive. He may be Kodiak. Kodiak may be the movie’s word for God, to borrow a line from The Crow, in the eyes of every child. But what he is, for certain, is a moral centre in an uncertain world and a man whose purity of purpose carries the movie.

His relationship with Willa is where the movie really shines. Billie Boullet’s previous work includes playing Anne Frank in A Small Light and Fenella Feverfew in The Worst Witch TV adaptation and she’s phenomenal. Willa is every inch a teenager, funny, snarky, bored and wickedly clever, terrified and hiding it. But she’s written, and played, as someone whose entire life has been shifted a little to the left. She’s a war baby, and she’s smart enough to see that. Boullet throws her heart and soul into the role and Willa’s choices become central as the movie continues. She’s the future, Dad sees that from the jump. By the end of the movie, so do we.

Verdict: Worldbreaker is brave and kind in a genre that’s often neither. It deserves much better than it’s been getting. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart

 

It’s on Amazon Prime now.