IO review – post-cataclysmic Netflix adventure aims high, lands in middle

Margaret Qualley and Anthony Mackie add gravity to a sci-fi drama about a dying Earth that marries admirable ambition with inconsistent plottingIn promotional blurbs, Netflix describes its newest original film, IO, as set on “post-cataclysmic” Earth. I…

Margaret Qualley and Anthony Mackie add gravity to a sci-fi drama about a dying Earth that marries admirable ambition with inconsistent plotting

In promotional blurbs, Netflix describes its newest original film, IO, as set on “post-cataclysmic” Earth. It’s a fitting description – somewhere between calamity and full apocalypse – for a film that doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. Too measured and sedate for a post-apocalyptic thriller, yet too barren for a Christopher Nolan-style space and time travel epic, IO appears most akin to The Martian in that it focuses primarily on one person’s grit and resourcefulness to endure and grow plants in an unforgiving place.

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