Tides – first-look review

A Ger­man-Swiss co-pro­duc­tion with Roland Emmerich among its exec­u­tive pro­duc­ers, Tides is an atmos­pher­ic sci-fi anchored by an engag­ing per­for­mance from Nora Arnezed­er. Although com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed vis­tas are employed for the pre­sen­ta­tion of a dystopi­an Earth, Tim Fehlbaum’s film ben­e­fits great­ly from the tac­til­i­ty of the sets and real-world loca­tions he employs, par­tic­u­lar­ly the mud­flats of North­ern Germany.

Things get off to a propul­sive start with the crash-land­ing of a space pod after it los­es con­trol in Earth’s atmos­phere. This is Ulysses 2, sent from Kepler 209, a plan­et where Earth’s rul­ing elite set­tled after their home became unin­hab­it­able due to cli­mate change, pan­demics and war. Two gen­er­a­tions on, the Kepler humans have some­how lost the abil­i­ty to repro­duce on the dry and rocky plan­et, so are look­ing to assess if Earth may now have more accom­mo­dat­ing con­di­tions to ensure the human race’s survival.

Trans­mis­sion from the first Ulysses mis­sion was lost short­ly after land­ing on Earth years ago, so it’s up to astro­naut Blake (Arnezed­er) – whose father (Sebas­t­ian Roché) was on the pre­vi­ous ship – and her small crew to pick up the pieces and resume the gath­er­ing of intel. The few sur­vivors of the (space)shipwreck are soon tak­en cap­tive by a com­mu­ni­ty of nomad-like humans that have endured liv­ing in a float­ing vil­lage in a ter­ri­to­ry plagued by mist and high tides.

Though some knowl­edge of the Eng­lish lan­guage remains, these Earth­lings large­ly com­mu­ni­cate through a seem­ing­ly new dialect, which is pur­pose­ly left unsub­ti­tled in order to aid a sense of oth­er­ing that is rel­e­vant to a lat­er plot devel­op­ment: a few sur­vivors of the orig­i­nal Ulysses mis­sion, head­ed by Gib­son (Iain Glen), man­aged to estab­lish their own set­tle­ment, look­ing to recolonise Earth. That there are chil­dren and babies among the nomads sug­gests this will be possible.

In 2013, Joseph Kosinski’s Tom Cruise-star­ring block­buster Obliv­ion received mixed notices in part due to just how deriv­a­tive its sto­ry was, thanks to the sheer quan­ti­ty of famous sci-fi films from which it seemed to pinch plot points and visu­al cues – from Moon to 2001: A Space Odyssey. No mat­ter how enter­tain­ing Obliv­ion may be on its own terms, there’s a per­vad­ing sense it’s sim­ply a stitch­ing togeth­er of spare parts from key works that came before it.

Tides has a sim­i­lar Frankenstein’s mon­ster prob­lem, though its pool of parts is even broad­er. There’s lots of Inter­stel­lar and Water­world in the sto­ry and pro­duc­tion design, with a smat­ter­ing of Sun­shine and the Mad Max sequels. The repro­duc­tion fac­tor brings to mind Chil­dren of Men, with one of the very last shots of Tides recall­ing the final moments of Alfon­so Cuarón’s film.

The famil­iar­i­ty would be less of a prob­lem if the momen­tum of the open­ing stages was sus­tained, but the film’s sec­ond half, most­ly set indoors in the more mil­i­tarised Kepler set­tle­ment, has pac­ing issues, while also lack­ing the ear­li­er tac­til­i­ty and visu­al inter­est. And despite the ear­ly hints towards Tides becom­ing an action movie like most of the films it resem­bles, it’s ulti­mate­ly light on excit­ing set-pieces.