Population: 2 (2012) User Reviews

Depressive, Boring and Messy

[claudio_carvalho · 3/10 · 9 July 2016]

In the near future, the Omni Tech Corporation develops an expensive shield to protect Earth from the global warming. However the project fails and all the inhabitants die. In Portland, Oregon, Lilith (Suzanne Tufan) is the only survivor. While she scavenges supplies on the wasteland, she recalls her middle-class life with her husband Simon Prime (Jon Ashley Hall) before the Apocalypse.

"Population: 2" is a depressive, boring and messy sci-fi. The plot is confused from the title and there are many unanswered questions. Why population 2 if there is only one survivor? Why Lilith has survived the Apocalipse? Who are the pilot and the guy in the control tower and what is the objective of the flight? Did Simon give a Pandora pill to Lilith in her glass of wine? Is that why he committed suicide? Where are the habitats where the Omni Tech Corporation executives have protected themselves? My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "A Sobrevivente" ("The Survivor")

A yawner

[pmstone3 · 1/10 · 12 August 2015]

Can I give it negative stars? I'm certainly glad to hear about the struggles that Gil Luna and Jonathan Stark had making this movie. But let me tell you about the struggles I had staying awake. It starts out slow and goes down hill from there. And if you get excited about hearing a couple of fighter pilots babble endlessly between themselves, while they fly along and we watch graphics that look like a flight sim from 10 years ago....this is for you. Why that's even in the movie, I don't know. Doesn't add anything to the movie at all. And that's saying something. I found myself wishing the only survivors would just give it up and die, then it would be over.

This movie is absolutely horrible

[John-S-Fowler · 1/10 · 23 May 2013]

I fast forwarded to the end thinking there might be some 'big' ending but alas... the entire movie was boring and lame from start to finish. Some characters even talked in a monotonic tone as if they were also bored to even be in the movie.

Where were the post-nuclear mutations? Rats the size of cars? Come on!

If you have some time to waste and you are looking for something to do I recommend going outside and watching the clouds float by as you will find much more entertainment than you might find from watching this movie... or perhaps watching paint dry is your thing...

In any event, please do yourself a favor and pretend you never even knew that this movie existed and your life will be richer because of it.

A decent enough story ruined by the cast.

[deion-williams · 3/10 · 11 May 2013]

I was looking forward to watching this movie. I'm a die hard dystopian/apocalyptic fan, whether that be movies or books, and love a sole survivor style situation; so this should have fit the bill perfectly for me.

Now the plot line and the cinematography is good. Most scenes are fairly well shot and the story - although it flits from scene to scene and back and forth between the present and past - is easy enough to follow and blends in quite nicely. Some of the darker apocalyptic scenes are shot very well and show Lilith (Suzanne Tufan) struggling to survive and walking through the apocalyptic wasteland, and bedding down in her basement at night.

Suzanne Tufan plays a decent role whilst also narrating many of the scenes well too. But there are one or two that let the whole game down. Well, mainly one, and that's her on-screen husband. It's been a long time since I've wanted to put my fist inside of the TV and punch someone just for the role they play. And I don't mean because of the person he portrays, but because of the way he acted it out. It's like watching Joey from friends when he acts as Dr. Drake Ramoray in 'Days of our Lives'. Just awful.

Trainwreck after it exploded.

[anthonydejongh · 1/10 · 22 August 2015]

I wish I could unwatch this.... Purely was curious about this one, because ( going by title) to me it was an obvious follow up/remake of it's awesome predecessor Population: 1. Only a puking gargoyle could have been more off the truth: this flick ( and I use that term very positively now) has nothing to do whatsoever with said predecessor and what I came to watch was nothing but a slow moving, never ending stale production of something that should have been locked up in a non-existing online dungeon. Everyone 'acting' here should lower their heads in shame every time it comes up in a friendly chat. I'm not a fan, as you obviously can see...burn this movie and let nobody in the future ever know it actually was recorded.

LIFE IS ALWAYS A LET DOWN

[nogodnomasters · 2/10 · 9 April 2019]

This is a 2012 film called "Population 2" that didn't do well so it was re-titled and repackaged and placed in Walmart ($9.88 US) for idiots like me to buy. Lilith (Suzanne Tufan) has survived the doomsday event as she walks around in a gas mask and narrates and has boring flashbacks which consume the stories' subplot and various themes. It takes place about 20 years in the future.

It seems Omni Tech has saved the planet with a $450 trillion dollar sun shield (I think that is more money than every existed in the history of the planet, but just go with it). Things go bad, planet heats up, riots, and then for some reason we drop the big one. Seems the company has selected a core group to survive...somewhere, but it was too expensive to develop more dialogue.

The themes seemed to be about corporate vs. people control; corporate media control, and technology vs technology. The acting was extremely bad. The dialogue could not have been worse. This is one of those films people will cliche about getting 90 minutes of their life back and wishing they could give zero stars.

Congrats Gil Luna on getting this into Walmart.

Guide: F-bomb. A-bomb. No sex or nudity.

Should have had better sound

[drystyx · 5/10 · 11 October 2020]

This post apocalyptic story of a single person living life alone on Earth, has the earmarks of being fairly inspired. There is some good to this, and some bad. First, the bad, which brings the movie way down, is the poor sound quality. You can't understand a word without closed caption. It can't be done. That said, we plod along through this story, which is "style over substance" so to speak, as we get the style of quiet depression, and that's fair enough. We're dealing with a sole survivor all alone, in this case a woman for a change, which is something Hollywood has hated to do. This movie does dare a little bit, although there are some formula traits. The woman being the last person on Earth is fresh. In almost every such movie, it's always a "married man". Can't be a bachelor, or a woman. Has to be a married man, so this movie does dare to break the Hollywood formula big time. There is the "corporate greed" formula, which would be fair to show, except it's very trite. Perhaps in twenty years that won't be so overdone, and the production team members obviously think so. The low budget look gives the impression of the production team deciding on location even before some of the dialog is written. The flashback settings are very dull, and the apocalyptic settings are actually more interesting. Yet our heroine seems to miss the dullness of the people. That's another weakness, the motivation. The dialog is not nearly as bad as most modern TV and movie dialog, but it's not supreme. This should have been better. Better sound alone would help. And perhaps making the characters somewhat more motivated.

Awesome-ness. Pure awesome-ness.

[StephanieMadrid · 10/10 · 24 May 2013]

I saw this film at the Worldfest International Film Festival in Houston, TX where it won a Platinum Remi for Best Sci-Fi Feature! The filmmakers, Gil Luna and Jonathan Stark, were present and shared their story about the struggles and triumphs in making this film. If you support independent film and post-apocalyptic awesomeness, then you need to BUY this film. The story will make you cry, laugh and really appreciate your life.

The DP also did excellent work. There's one shot where the lead actress is looking at her reflection on some broken glass. I remember that one specifically because it was one of my favorite shots from the film. I even remember talking about it with my friends at the Houston screening.

And the lead actress….OMG! I was cracking up when she was talking to herself. She's very versatile. I can't wait to see her in future films.

Way to go Population 2 team!

Pretty Pictures of a Pro-Life Apocalypse in Portland

[studboyslim-974-327432 · 7/10 · 15 April 2013]

"Population: 2" centers on a woman named Lillith, the only survivor of an ecological disaster that wipes out life as we know it on Earth. We see her past as a series of flashbacks that gradually come to explain how she ended up wandering alone through the tattered ruins of Portland, Oregon.

Suzanne Tufan steals the show in her challenging dual-role as Lillith, a woman who is broken in two by tragedy. Before the disaster, Lillith is happy, bright and hopeful. Afterwards she is broken, haunted and struggling to maintain her sanity.

As we delve into Lillith's past, we find that the ecological disaster was in part caused by the money-grubbing tactics of a Corporation called OmniTech, whose irresponsible use of "solar shield" technology to deflect the sun's rays and cool the earth backfired disastrously, causing a global meltdown. The evil empire is headed by the villainous Vincent Velo (Shelly Lipkin), who (before the disaster) employs Lillith's husband Simon (Jon Ashley Hall) as his media mouthpiece. Expecting special treatment for his years of service to OmniTech, Simon asks Vincent to ensure space for his family in "habitats" that OmniTech is setting up to help it's most important employees survive the disaster. Vincent tells Simon that he can only offer him one habitat, stocked with enough resources for one person. In an unfortunate twist, this all happens right around the time Lillith discovers she's pregnant.

Now we arrive at the point in our story that the writer has been guiding us towards all along: an ultimatum. Early on the film establishes the existence of an over-the-counter abortion pill called "Pandora" (brought to you by OmniTech!). The "Pandora" commercial features a golden-curled young woman dancing in a sea of flowers as a soothing voice-over instructs us that "A pregnancy can sometimes come at the wrong time in your life." When spineless Simon learns of his wife's pregnancy, he takes matters into his own hands and forces his wife to abort by slipping a Pandora tablet into her drink without her knowledge. By the time we arrive at this wildly contrived moment of choice, we have already suspected for some time that this would be a pro-life flick.

Or is it? The politics are quite muddled in "Population: 2". Simon takes away Lillith's right of choice by forcing her to abort, and kills himself out of guilt. How would this exchange have played out differently if Lillith were the one who wanted to abort and Simon had tried to stop her? Does the fact that Simon's choice ultimately saved Lillith's life mitigate his crime? And what does all of this have to do with the environment, corporations and the threat of destructive technology? And why the recurring religious themes? Where is "God" in this movie?

Technically, "Population: 2" is one of the more impressive local features I've seen. The photography is solid, capturing some surprisingly haunting images of loss and destruction. The editing is a little uneven, and like many independent films relies too heavily on digital filters and color-correction. Overall the special effects were serviceable and managed to breath some authenticity into the filmmaker's vision of post-apocalyptic Portland.

I think the strongest scenes in "Population: 2" are when Lillith is alone in the ruins of Portland. Tufan's nuanced performance is really what makes this film work, and other actors and dialogue and preachy political ideologies seem to only get in the way.

Slow, but pretty interesting

[Woodyanders · 7/10 · 2 November 2020]

Lilith (a fine and moving performance by Suzanne Tufan) wanders around the rubble eking out a forlorn existence after the rest of mankind gets wiped out and reflects back on the life she had before the holocaust happened.

Writer/director Gil Luna relates the reasonably absorbing story at a deliberate pace, ably crafts a brooding melancholy atmosphere, and makes nice use of various desolate locations. Moreover, Tufan astutely captures the sad and lonely plight of her character; she receives sound support from John Ashley Hall as Lilith's irate husband Simon and Shelly Lipkin as slippery CEO Vincent Velo. Alas, the meandering narrative doesn't really go anywhere and the ending is limp and dissatisfying. Worth a watch for end-of-the-world movie completists.