The old post-apocalyptic shuffle is alive in “Young Ones,” but this catastrophe is more credible than most such speculations. The problem here is water, which has evaporated, at least in this corner of the world.
Patriarch Ernest Holm (Michael Shannon) trades trinkets in exchange for supplies, and just manages to keep hold of his “farm” — a patch of brown desert — in hope that the soil needs only the rain to come back. But the film’s real attention is on the next generation, played by a trio of child stars aging into young adulthood.
Holm’s patient son Jerome (Kodi Smit-McPhee, “Let Me In”) and resentful daughter Mary (Elle Fanning) must negotiate their future with the ambitious Flem Lever (Nicholas Hoult, “Warm Bodies”). Ernest isn’t crazy about Flem hanging around with Mary, for reasons that turn out to be pretty well-founded.
“Young Ones” makes nods toward science fiction with its “Mad Max” fashion sense, its filling stations — for water, not gasoline — and its four-legged robot/beast of burden. Beyond that, writer-director Jake Paltrow is content to rely on the traditions of the Western and a visual approach that seems to be aiming somewhere between the worlds of Terrence Malick and Paul Thomas Anderson.
The tone is grim and the look is arty; the story lines stick out in random directions. Overall, it’s a mess, with its biggest fault the failure to color in the sole female character of significance — an especially unforgivable failing with Elle Fanning coming off the remarkable “Ginger &Rosa” and “Maleficent.”
If it’s a misfire, though, “Young Ones” at least conjures up some haunting stuff along the way. The bleak dystopian landscape (shot in South Africa) helps, and so does an intriguing and sometimes stirring score by Nathan Johnson.
Hoult’s streak of smiling untrustworthiness — currently flowering in Jaguar commercials — is put to good use here, and Paltrow photographs Smit-McPhee as though he were the young Abraham Lincoln, all gangly limbs and soulful eyes.
Left unexplored is the brother-sister relationship that the film only belatedly comes around to (and speaking of that, yes, Jake Paltrow is the brother of Gwyneth). It’s not quite odd enough to be a future cult film, but at least this movie lingers in the mind.
“Young Ones” (2½ stars)
In the post-apocalypse, the world is starved for water, but a farmer (Michael Shannon) believes his patch of land will someday bounce back. This uneven but sometimes haunting movie focuses on the younger generation, with a trio of former child stars: Nicholas Hoult, Elle Fanning, Kodi Smit-McPhee.
Rating: R, for violence, language
Showing: Grand Illusion theater
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