Houdini's Magic Movie Ticket

Filmed in New Zealand, this movie deals with an end of the world scenario. If you read on, you will encounter spoilers.

I watched this today. A guy wakes up in New Zealand, and finds out he's the last man on earth. Or is he? He gets lonely, goes crazy for a while, and then starts getting his act together. All of a sudden, a woman shows up. They look for more people. Well, she does, and he pretends to. Meanwhile, he does research. He's a scientist, and he was part of the project that was likely responsible for killing everybody. Everybody except the two of them, anyway. The governments of the world got together to work on a network of some sort that surrounds the earth, and could potentially provide energy to planes through unconventional means. The project went sour and killed everybody who was alive. As it turns out, the man and woman were both dead at the exact moment the effect took place, and so they came back to life, completely unharmed. Later, they meet up with a Maori tribesman who also survived, and a love triangle develops. In the end, the scientist blows up his science lab, hoping to prevent another death effect, which he had calculated to be forthcoming.

Parts I didn't like: The scientist goes nuts, puts on a dress, brings a shotgun to a church, and shoots Jesus. It wasn't that funny, and it wasn't that dramatic. I also didn't enjoy the periods of male full frontal nudity. But thankfully they weren't too long. There was a moment in the film where action evolved out of stupidity, which I found annoying. It like, "Let's spice this film up, but give the characters a flimsy excuse." And there were a couple of other scenes that seemed unrealistic. But apart from that, the film was pretty interesting.

One solitary instance where the film seemed to align itself with pop culture was when the Maori guy was in a jeep chasing the scientist, who was in a truck. The woman tells the Maori something along the lines of, "I wouldn't stay with you if you were the last man on earth."

Then the guy slips on some shades and says, "I'm working on it."

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