I enjoy Fallout-themed features like "The Book of Eli", "Snow Piercer" and "The Hills Have Eyes." For its independent film budget, "The Last Survivors" delivered good production quality and intense drama with well-paced scenes. The film director depicted hardships and life-and-death struggles that were very convincing. Carson and his daughter make formidable villains (think "Neegan"). I can empathize with Kendal's day-to-day struggle to hide from the hunters, scrounge enough food and water for her group, and eject stragglers from their land, with the hope to find the correct distributor cap to fly their plane a better place. For its originality and fine execution, I give it high ratings.

Maybe the writer/director is a wannabee Quentin Tarantino, taking this post-apocalyptic setting with stranded teenagers to ward off the plan of a murderous water baron. The difference is Tarantino's scripts are always semi-serious, but this script is dead serious and the kids end up having to shoot and hack a bunch of adults to death. That to me really detracts from an otherwise fine effort.A bit over three years ago I saw a very mediocre Christmas-themed movie but I recall the one highlight was a very young actress named Haley Lu Richardson. She had a good role in that earlier movie and I was anxious to see how she has progressed, nearing the age of 20 but still a teenager.She plays Kendal, a very confident and self-sufficient girl in the Oregon desert (actually filmed in California's Mojave desert). It hasn't rained for about 10 years, all the homes are just shells of their former forms, people are trying to get any water from the drying wells. Kendal wants to escape the desert and her hope is they will find a suitable replacement for the broken distributor cap of the small airplane's engine. She searches among all the wrecked and abandoned cars and trucks she can find. As her own meager water well is just about dry.She shares her space with teen Booboo Stewart as Dean. They have made a small room in the corner of the attic so that they will not be found by searchers. It isn't clear to me what their relationship might be but near the end they kiss so he must be a boyfriend. But he is dying of kidney failure and the lack of water just exacerbates the problem.The big problem is a water baron who is using water scarcity to usurp all the properties for himself, and resorting to point-blank shooting of people he considers excessive. This is the enemy that Kendal must finally eradicate to assure their safety, and hopefully find a repair part to allow them to fly out of the valley and to a more hospitable place.Saw it at home on Netflix streaming.

The way we see the future is really depressing most of the times. Even if it's a great movie like "Mad Max Fury Road", it's very dark (dusty and dry too). As is the case with this low budget movie. It might have its issues along the way, but for its budget it is more than just decently made.Surviving in a hostile environment is not easy. Especially if you have bad guys like the ones in this movie. Still you long for the standoff you know will be coming, sweating along the way (sorry for the pun) and really feeling for the main character and what she has to go through. Which is a nice touch to have a female character being in the middle of all of this.

A teenage girl (Haley Lu Richardson) fights to protect the last working well in a drought-stricken valley from a greedy water baron (Jon Gries).What I like about his film is that it concentrates on building a world. Although the location used was probably relatively small, we are given the illusion that the entire world -- or at least enough of it -- has completely dried out. And it is very effective.We do not have zombies (thank goodness) or unbreathable air. Just the simple idea of a drying up world and the increasing value of water. It works. By gosh, it works. Add in a few guns and a samurai sword, and we have a nice plot. Is it horror? Not really. Science fiction? Sort of, but it is so close to reality it almost gets around that, too.