On Amazon Prime, the science fiction thriller Tides is featuring Iain Glen (Game of Thrones) and Nora Arnezeder. MyMMO author Schuhmann says: This is a clever and realistic film that takes us into a post-apocalyptic future that manages without zombies, yet shows humans at their worst.
This is the situation of the film:
In “Tides,” humanity has devastated the Earth but has survived. The Earth has become largely uninhabitable due to flooding – apparently, the polar ice caps have melted. The elite of humanity has escaped into space and established a colony on Kepler-209.
However, humanity cannot survive there: The radiation from Kepler makes women infertile, and humanity is on the brink of extinction. A team has already been sent back to Earth to check if resettlement is possible, but we hear nothing more from them.
We follow a trio of researchers whose space capsule makes a crash landing on the flooded and devastated Earth.
Tides starts like a horror film but raises exciting questions
This is what makes the film special: The 104-minute thriller breaks into two halves:
- In the first half, we see the inhospitable Earth and how difficult it is to survive there. There is little dialogue, everything feels surreal and foreign. Tides resembles a horror film here.
- In the second half, the film shifts more towards science fiction. It paints an exciting colonialist scenario, posing questions about which boundaries must be crossed and are permissible to save humanity.
Iain Glen, known from Game of Thrones, shines in Tides as a charismatic yet dubious character who wishes to be a hero and the savior of humanity but possesses many traits of a villain.
The conflict between the seemingly modern and civilized settlers from outer space and the “feral” survivors of Earth (referred to as “Muds”) creates a space that raises questions reminiscent of the colonial era.
Why isn’t the film more widely known? Tides comes from a Swiss director and was filmed in Germany on the island of Neuwerk and in Basel.
While it has won numerous awards in Germany and Switzerland, it was commercially unsuccessful with about $377,000 worldwide at the box office.
You can watch Tides on Amazon Prime. It is available in German.
More SF films that we recommend: A fascinating film on Netflix is like “Squid Game,” but the game only ends when there is one survivor left.
