''The Blackout'' (russian: Аванпост, Avanpost, Outpost) is a 2019 Russian
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
action thriller film
Action film is a film genre in which the protagonist is thrust into a series of events that typically involve violence and physical feats. The genre tends to feature a mostly resourceful hero struggling against incredible odds, which include life ...
directed by
Egor Baranov
Egor Baranov (russian: Егор Баранов; born December 3, 1988 in Yekaterinburg) is a Russian film director. In 2006, he entered the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography for directing faculty, studied in the studio of Sergei Sol ...
and starring
Pyotr Fyodorov
Pyotr Petrovich Fyodorov (russian: Пётр Петрович Фёдоров, born 21 April 1982) is a Russian actor. He is known for playing the role of Guy Gaal in ''The Inhabited Island'', Gromov in '' Stalingrad'' and Yakovlev in '' The Duelist ...
. It had its world premiere at the
Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival
The Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival is an annual independent film festival held each March in San Jose, California and Redwood City, California. The international festival combines the cinematic arts with Silicon Valley’s innovation. It is ...
on 15 March 2019 and was released in the Russian Federation on 21 November 2019. The film is about an event that suddenly plunges the entire world into darkness, rapidly destroying life on Earth except for a small area in Eastern Europe. It received generally negative reviews from film critics.
Plot
Prologue
When an alarm is triggered at the "Outpost" military base, soldiers take up positions and prepare for battle. It is reported that an unidentified enemy is approaching, creatures larger than humans moving at a speed of twenty kilometers per hour.
A month earlier
24 days before the events of the Prologue, serviceman Oleg has a date with Alena. Later they go back to his place. Suddenly the entire world, except for the area around
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
, and parts of
Belarus
Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by R ...
,
Ukraine
Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...
and
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
is plunged into darkness. The fate of billions is unknown. Communications are down throughout the rest of the world, and only a small number of people have survived in the area that becomes known as the Circle of Life. A defensive perimeter is established and reconnaissance groups are sent out but do not return. They find that there was an attack on
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...
, leaving unknown numbers dead. To defend against the mysterious enemy, the humans mobilize an army, and outposts are built. After leaving the Circle of Life to conduct a reconnaissance operation, a squad sweeps the dead cities outside and a soldier is attacked and wounded, The other soldiers try to shoot the stranger, but he escapes.
Outpost protection
The action goes back to the prologue. While preparing for an unknown enemy, electricity is turned off and the outpost is plunged into darkness. After being informed that creatures bigger than humans are emerging from the forest at 20 km/h, they begin to fire, while discovering that the enemy is in fact a massive herd of brown bears. The next morning, not all soldiers survived. Among the survivors is Oleg, whose leg was injured. In Moscow it is revealed some survivors from the edge of the Quarantine zone now have “abilities”; one of these people, Sasha, appears to have a psychic connection to the unknown attackers. A strange figure calling himself Eid comes to the patient Sasha and asks for his help, since Sasha's Psychic link can locate Eid's brother Ra, who is behind all this. Four soldiers, led by Marina, train their weapons at Eid, but the latter, with the help of supernormal abilities, turns the soldiers' weapons at Marina and suggests that he explain everything to them if they save his life. During interrogation, Eid explains that he is an alien from a distant star system that has long died out. They want to move to Earth, because in their constellation the star “
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...
” is still young and will live long enough, Ra is behind all this, although before that Eid thought he was the only one on Earth. He arrived on Earth another two hundred thousand years ago, which means that according to his calculations, the ship with their army will be here tomorrow. The problem is that he does not know where Ra is hiding, which controls the minds of ordinary people outside the “circle of life” but the only one who knows where to find him is Sasha. Eid penetrates Sasha's head, and he finds out that Ra is on the roof of a skyscraper in Kirov. At that moment Ra himself looked at Sasha and realized that he had been found. Eid decided to leave Sasha at the outpost, and Ra at that time ordered people to launch a missile attack at the outpost. However, Eid with Zhenya and the rest of the soldiers, led by Mary, remain alive, as they had left the base to find Ra.
Losses
At this time, Yura joins the satellite-9 group of the outpost and in the middle of the night finds a young boy in one of the apartments. However, during while questioned by Lieutenant Maxim about what happened, the boy suddenly draws a knife from Maxim's pants and kills him; in retaliation, the boy is shot dead by the other soldiers. A whole crowd of people then begins to attack the group under the control of Ra and only Yura and Olya remain alive. They hijack one of the abandoned cars and drive back to the outpost.
On the way, they meet the surviving outpost soldiers led by Marina and Major Dovlatov, from whom they learn that the outpost was destroyed by a massive missile strike. Eid explains that if Sasha went with them, Ra would have killed them otherwise, and the outpost would have left him alone. Gathered together, they go back to Kirov, encountering a crowd of people under the control of Ra, fight through a skyscraper, climb the roof and find Ra. Eid and Ra Engage in battle and eventually Eid tears out a device from Ra's chest, Allowing Yura to thrust a grenade into Ra's chest, killing him.
After Ra's death, Eid sends out a telepathic pulse that kills all the remaining drones, making them instantly collapse.
Osmolovskaya asks Eid what they will do next. Eid replies that they will do what they were created to do; kill.
Eid continues that in the past, humans evolved to such a degree that they became a threat even to the aliens. Ra, concerned over this, then created a religion for humanity based on love, hoping that it would keep humanity in a perpetual state of love and peacefulness. Instead, humans turned religion into a reason for more conflict and violence. Eid then orders the survivors to kill the colonizers when the ship has landed.
Upset hearing all this, Zhenya asks Eid why he did not arrive sooner before the death 8 billion people, to which Eid replies that doing so would have disrupted the plan and triggered the arriving ship into defensive mode. He then reveals his plan; the survivors killing the colonizers and then restarting civilization with Eid as their god.
Zhenya exclaims that Eid is not God but the Devil, to which Eid replies that he is the god they deserve.
Furious, Oleg confronts Eid, but Yura defends him, saying that Eid is their only chance of survival. Zhenya then lunges at Eid and stabs him with a knife, before realizing that he in reality mortally stabbed Osmolovskaya who Eid made appear as him by using his psychic powers.
Oleg and Yura starts to fight, when Olya suddenly shoots Yura, wounding him. Oleg then shoots Eid, who responds by creating multiple illusions of himself as Oleg's father to distract him.
However, Zhenya seizes the moment and lunges at the real Eid, throwing himself and Eid from the roof, killing them both.
Invasion
An alien ship descends from the sky, next to a skyscraper, and a hatch opens. However, the aliens for some reason do not go out. Alena, Olya and Oleg decide to enter the alien ship while the injured Yura shouts in their backs “We will die all the same!” Entering the ship, they find out that all the aliens are still sleeping in cryocapsules and have not woken up. Countdown timers turn on at cryocapsules, and the three main characters decide to break the pipes for oxygen supply, thereby killing them in the capsules themselves, leaving them to die without oxygen. When it remains to destroy the last tube, it turns out that it delivers oxygen to the capsules with the aliens' children, and they decide not to break it. The capsule timers reach zero, the capsules open, and alien children crawl out of their capsules. They see three representatives of planet Earth in front of them. The latter voluntarily throw their weapons on the floor in front of their eyes, proving that they will not harm them.
Cast
*
Kseniya Kutepova
Kseniya Pavlovna Kutepova (russian: Ксе́ния Па́вловна Куте́пова; born 1 August 1971) is a Russian actress, Merited Artist of the Russian Federation, the winner of State Prize of the Russian Federation. She has appeared in ...
as Osmolovskaya
*
Svetlana Ivanova
Svetlana Andreyevna Ivanova (russian: Светлана Андреевна Иванова; born 26 September 1985) is a Russian theater and film actress. Her feature film debut was in ''The 9th Company'' (2005). Subsequently she starred in such ...
as Olya
*
Pyotr Fyodorov
Pyotr Petrovich Fyodorov (russian: Пётр Петрович Фёдоров, born 21 April 1982) is a Russian actor. He is known for playing the role of Guy Gaal in ''The Inhabited Island'', Gromov in '' Stalingrad'' and Yakovlev in '' The Duelist ...
as Yura
*
Konstantin Lavronenko
Konstantin Nikolaevich Lavronenko (russian: Константи́н Никола́евич Лавро́ненко; born 20 April 1961) is a Soviet and Russian actor most commonly accredited for his performance as the mysterious father of two boys ...
as Mayor Dolmatov
*
Aleksey Chadov
Aleksey Aleksandrovich Chadov (russian: Алексе́й Алекса́ндрович Ча́дов, born 2 September 1981) is a Russian film actor. Brother to Andrei Chadov.
Career
Chadov made his film debut in the film ''War'' (2002) by directo ...
as Oleg
*
Lukerya Ilyashenko as Alena
*
Filipp Avdeyev
Filipp Vadimovich Avdeyev (russian: Фили́пп Вади́мович Авде́ев; born November 10, 1991) is a Russian actor and director. A graduate of the Moscow Art Theatre School. Since 2012 he has been an actor at the Gogol Center Thea ...
as Zhenya
* Ilya Volkov as Ra
* Artyom Tkachenko as Eid
* Sergey Godin as Lavrin
*
Anastasiya Venkova
*
Aleksandr Nedorezov as Spetsnazovets
* Angelina Strechina as Katia
Production
Initially, the film was conceived as a series, but the creators had only the script of the first series. When this series was filmed,
Egor Baranov
Egor Baranov (russian: Егор Баранов; born December 3, 1988 in Yekaterinburg) is a Russian film director. In 2006, he entered the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography for directing faculty, studied in the studio of Sergei Sol ...
made some changes to the history. After the first series was shot, it became clear that the changes in the script slightly change the intonation and direction of the plot. After that, it was decided to move the script in a slightly different direction. Baranov claims that his film is more anti-war, since he did not try to show the strength of the military, in contrast to films like ''
Transformers
''Transformers'' is a media franchise produced by American toy company Hasbro and Japanese toy company Takara Tomy. It primarily follows the Autobots and the Decepticons, two alien robot factions at war that can transform into other forms, suc ...
'' and ''
Top Gun
''Top Gun'' is a 1986 American action drama film directed by Tony Scott, produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, with distribution by Paramount Pictures. The screenplay was written by Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr., and was inspired by an a ...
''. In the film, about 70% of the total timing is done using computer graphics.
Filming
According to Baranov, they worked on the filming of the full film for about six months, and sometimes about a year. On the set of the film, real soldiers with the latest military equipment were involved, who agreed to star in this film, offering only small tips and advice for scenes with their participation. At the same time, the military themselves did not interfere in the script of the film. Filming was completed in May 2019.
Music
Released as a part of the film's official soundtrack, the song "fine" was released by American musician
Mike Shinoda
Michael Kenji Shinoda (; ja, 篠田 賢治, Shinoda Kenji; born February 11, 1977) is an American musician, singer, rapper, songwriter and record producer. He co-founded the rock band Linkin Park in 1996 and was the band's collaborative vocali ...
on 31 October 2019. Shinoda has also released a music video for the song on 3 December, which includes scenes from the film.
Release
The film had its world premiere at the
Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival
The Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival is an annual independent film festival held each March in San Jose, California and Redwood City, California. The international festival combines the cinematic arts with Silicon Valley’s innovation. It is ...
in
San Jose, California
San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...
, on 15 March 2019.
Its release in
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
took place on 21 November 2019,
and on 26 November it was announced that the film would also be released in the
USA
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
and in two dozen other foreign countries. It was released on VOD as ''The Blackout: Invasion Earth'' by
Shout! Factory
Shout! Factory is an American home video and music company founded in 2002 as Retropolis Entertainment. Its video releases include previously released feature films, classic and contemporary television series, animation, live music, and comedy ...
on 29 May 2020.
Marketing
The film was presented by Premier Studios at
Comic-Con Russia 2019 along with the film ''
Caramora'' and the film adaptation of ''
Metro 2033 Metro 2033 may refer to:
* ''Metro 2033'' (novel), a 2002 novel by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky
* ''Metro 2033'' (video game), a 2010 first-person shooter video game based on the novel
See also
* ''Metro'' (franchise), originating from t ...
''. ''The Blackout'' is the only film from Russia included in the program of the American festival Cinequest, combining cinema and high technology. On 20 August 2019, ''
Mir Fantastiki
''Mir Fantastiki'' (russian: Мир фантастики), officially abbreviated as ''MirF'', is a Russian monthly science fiction and fantasy magazine. The name also refers to the website run by the magazine, Mirf.ru.
''Mir Fantastiki'' litera ...
'' magazine acted as the media partner of this film. On 23 October 2019, the filmmakers, together with Premier Studios, together with MY.GAMES launched the Warface Special Invitational Season 2: Outpost tournament, which combines the world of Warface with this film.
Reception
Box office
''The Blackout'' grossed $0 in North America
and $2.8 million worldwide,
against a production budget of about $4 million.
Home rentals
In the first week of rental, the film was able to collect only about 100 million rubles (≃$1.3 million) by the end of the weekend. By late November, early December, fees amounted to about 144 million rubles.
Critical response
The film holds a 57% approval rating on
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, based on 7 reviews, with an average of 5.3/10.
Stanislav Zelvensky gave the film 2.9 stars out of 10. Vladislav Shuravin of
film.ru
Film.ru, sometimes known in Russian as Фильм.ру, is a Russian web portal dedicated to cinema. The website publishes news, analytical articles, Russian film showtimes, box office performances, film reviews and maintains a film and tv show d ...
gave the film 4 stars out of 10. Pavel Voronkov, in his review of the film for ''
Gazeta.Ru'', lamented its running time as overlong, calling it "painfully, criminally, inhumanly drawn out", and wrote that "the flow of entrails and guts will tire, perhaps, even the most bloodthirsty militarist." Sergey Ageev, who wrote a review for fatcatslim.ru, praised ''The Blackout'' for its effects and action sequences, but criticized the film's script as "very, very bland", called the acting "lousy" and the plot "ridiculous".
Video game
On 7 November 2019, a browser game was launched, the main feature of which is integration with
Google Maps
Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets ( Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...
. In the application window, the user can enter any address (or simply indicate the city) and see how his native streets will change in the ensuing post-apocalypse in the universe of this film. Also in the game there will be elements of a shooter, since the main task in the game will be cleaning the streets from aliens.
Sequel
The movie was re-released in October 2020 as 6-episode TV version on TV-3 channel. For more information visit The Movie DB.
References
External links
* (in Russian)
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blackout (film), The
2019 films
2010s Russian-language films
2019 action thriller films
2010s science fiction thriller films
Russian science fiction thriller films
Russian science fiction action films
2019 science fiction action films
Russian action thriller films
Russian post-apocalyptic films
Russian dystopian films
2010s dystopian films
Anti-war films