Mutant World

Mutant World is a production of Calgary-based Nomadic Pictures, founded in 1995 by executive producers Chad Oakes and Mike Frislev,[8] who "gleefully" called Mutant World a B movie, which he defined as "big ideas brought to the screen with very little money".[7] Director David Winning, who regularly divides his time between Los Angeles and Calgary, having carved out "a long history as a gun-for-hire director with a penchant for guiding actors" through "B-movie terrain",[note 1] offered a slightly different take on making them: "It's so tongue-in-cheek. You get into it and laugh and think 'this is ridiculous' and then get pulled back into it. Which is the whole point of it when you have no money and are trying to stretch the story as much as you can, which is implausible to begin with."[7]

Mutant World was the third television movie for SyFy written by Toronto-based screenwriter Matt Campagna, all of which have followed a certain formula, as Eric Volmers points out: "take a supernatural, action-packed premise, add an established character actor ... and shoot it all cheaply and efficiently".[note 2] The film's working title at the start of principal photography was Fallout Asylum.[6][10][11] It is suggested that Campagna made an effort "to ensure that many of the ideas in Mutant World have a grounding in real science", apart from the film's radioactive mutant premise.[9]

Kim Coates in 2012.

The "star power" of Mutant World comes from Sons of Anarchy actor Kim Coates, whose role in the film is "small but meaty", requiring only three days for his scenes.[9] He was asked to star in the film by its Calgary producers, Chad Oakes and Mike Frislev, who had a past relationship with the actor after casting him in 2008's coming-of-age drama 45 R.P.M., but he insisted on changes to the script to give his character "a more poignant arc." Coates took the character seriously, keen on probing "the strange mind of a paranoid doomsday prepper."[9]

He's very savvy, very tough. We've seen this. It's in reality shows. There are zany people out there who are preparing for the apocalypse. They have their guns and their gasoline and are bunkered down and ready, which kind of freaks me out. But this guy is like that. And, wouldn't you know it, a comet is two hours away.[9]

Amber Marshall in 2015.

The project gave a few local actors a chance to play against type: Amber Marshall, who plays Heartland's earnest Amy Fleming, plays Nicole, "a scrappy, machine gun-toting medic",[7] while David LeReaney, a veteran theatre actor and dialect coach, plays "an action-ready military man", and was an actor David Winning had been wanting to work with "forever": "I wanted to cast him in things when I started out in movies. He was always 'Calgary's actor' — he was always the guy you wanted to get."[7] Jason Cermak is a Drayton Valley native who won an Alberta Film and Television Award the previous year for his role in the family drama Common Chord.[9] He admitted that being paid to "run around with guns" was "pretty cool", but also suggested that Mutant World has character arcs that are deeper than they initially appear, speaking of his own character, Geoff King:

Ten years takes a toll on him ... He's burdened with this responsibility of keeping what's left of humanity alive. He becomes quite introverted. His journey in coming to the surface, aside from just being attacked by mutants and such, he has to find himself again and try to answer questions about what his future looks like.[9]

His onscreen sister, Holly Deveaux, whose character Melissa is "a take-charge kind who is both handy with a gun and has a curious habit of breaking into sorrowful song",[7] likewise said it is empowering to play a female character who "kicks ass": "I always played Lara Croft on my computer, so this is a dream come alive for me ... I get to wear a thigh holster and everything. I took way too many selfies."[9]

Mutant World was also the feature film début for 17-year-old Irricana native Megan Tracz (Xeni), who was introduced to acting at the age of ten when she joined the Airdrie Family Theatre.[12]

Campagna wrote on his blog about having the chance to work alongside people from the props department on Chronicles of Riddick, "as well as a bunch of folks who worked on Nolan's new film" (Interstellar), and "at least two people" who had worked on Power Rangers movies"[11] (in another entry, he names David Winning as having directed the sequel to Power Rangers).[10]

Mutant World was shot over fifteen days[9] in Calgary (the old Telus Science Centre served as the bunker's interiors), Strathmore, and the CL Ranch near Springbank.[7][9] During principal photography, Coates sounded skeptical about whether it was possible to shoot this kind of film in so short a time: "What worries me is we're taking less and less and less time to shoot. When I read the script and (heard) it was going to be done in 15 days, I lost my s — t."[9] Matt Campagna described it as "a pretty wild time," and was happy to have been given "the gift of gorgeous snowfalls ... You can't even pay for that kind of production value!"[10] The ability to adapt quickly and "go with the flow" is a key requirement for low-budget horror films, a world that the Campagna knew very well,[9] as he wrote in his blog: "Between doing some on-the-fly re-writes, running a camera, animating graphics, and supervising visual effects, I've actually had some time to do a bit of directing".[10]

Campagna is "good friends" with the Canadian band Four Letter World, who provided the song for the end credits.[13]

In the US, the Mutant World aired on SyFy on 8 November 2014,[6] and in Canada on Super Channel in January 2015,[14] running into February.[5]

Mutant World was released on DVD on 26 May 2015,[6][15] and is available for streaming from iTunes.[16]

Eric Volmers described Mutant World as "funny, entertaining and action-packed," occasionally recalling John Carpenter's films, like Big Trouble in Little China and Escape from New York.[9] Chris Shalom compared it to World Gone Wild (1987), calling it "a spiritual companion in many ways": both have the same "watered-down, goofied-up" Road Warrior plot, both "shoehorn in a recognizable singer-actor" (Adam Ant and Ashanti), and "both will have the same destiny ... the few who embrace Mutant World will cherish it."

The tale of gun-toting survivors on an excursion through a barren post-apocalyptic world (or, as we Albertans call it, home) is probably most interesting as a contemporary example of a sub-genre that had an almost exclusive synergy with the 80s ... high-camp sci-fi Westerns that followed Star Wars and Road Warrior ...[5]

Shalom goes on to list a few of those "singular works": Radioactive Dreams, Buckaroo Banzai, and Hell Comes to Frogtown, further noting that, unlike the Eighties films, Mutant World is "delightfully female-centric, despite the largely male creative team", while at the same time, gender is not central to the film:

In fact, the film simultaneously upholds and subverts the Reagan-era Hollywood theme of father-son continuity. The moment of apocalypse ... coincides with the loss of protagonist Melissa's father ... But Melissa's journey leads her to the eventual embodiment not of her father, but of the mysterious Preacher, a motorcycle-straddling, steel-whip-cracking Ashanti in leather and a cowboy hat ... a key bonding scene between her and Holly Deveaux's Melissa, steeped in aggressive Christian overtones, evinces a curious and appealing gravity ... It's a clichéd scene that's instantly defamiliarized by its characters' genders, and it's a fine showcase for both Deveaux and director David Winning.[5]

Having said all this, Shalom finds Ashanti's acting highly lacking, and faults Mutant World for not being shot on film: it "looks bad, and it looks worse than it would have looked in the '80s", and being made for television "means that a number of TV-movie conventions, most notably the need to open fast and big, strain the film's storytelling."[5] But for its target audience and the people who made it, none of this matters: "Mutant World is exactly what it needs to be. The action's constant, the characters are colourful, the nurses are sexy and the mutant blood splatters...what more could you ask for?"[5]

Robyn Andrew gives the film 2 out of 5 stars, complaining that despite an interesting premise, Mutant World unfortunately falls short due to "shaky acting and cinematography," combined with "weak dialogue and poor special effects"; the film is "almost unbearable to watch."[6] Despite this, it also has a "goofy, amusing charm" if the viewer "does not take the story too seriously," making for entertaining viewing. The SyFy network "must be admired for taking risks and providing opportunities for up and coming writers, directors, and actors. Plenty of action, blood, and gore cover up most of the plot holes, and at the very least provide a good laugh."[6] Jim McLellan feels the film's potential is not at all realized, "because there is hardly any aspect that is not badly botched, right from the start:" Coates, the only real "name" in the cast, is "barely in the film," in a bait-and-switch; the script is "just terrible" as a quick mission "spirals off into a jolly road-trip, with no apparent regard for the people back in the bunker", and: "there's no explanation provided" to explain why "some people are totally mutated, some are only mutated at night(!), and others, like the Preacher, are apparently entirely untroubled".[17] McLellan goes on to criticize Ashanti's acting, the "poorly-choreographed fight" establishing Melissa as the leader, and how "no-one appears to have aged or been changed in the slightest by the passage of a decade". Like Shalom, he did "somewhat appreciate the element of role-reversal found here, with the most bad-ass roles given to the actresses. However, good intentions are never enough to overcome execution as horribly flawed as we see here."[17]

Winning said the audience at the sold-out Calgary premiere were "laughing and whooping it up"; he added: "It was nice to see people getting energized by it."[7]