quietearth [Celluloid 12.29.07] post apocalyptic review short scifi



Year: 2004
Director: Richard Lowry
Writer: Tor Lowry
IMDB: link
Trailer: link
Review by: quietearth
Rating: 8 out of 10

The Lowry Brothers were something of an unknown quantity to me, having been pointed out by Quiet Earth friend and filmmaker, Matt Davids. Upon further inspection, it turns out this duo has done quite a bit of work, with Richard doing the Directing/Composing/Editing and brother Tor doing the writing. Some of their feature length works include Destination Mars, an homage to 50's era science fiction, and the Wicksboro Incident, a sort of paranoid faux documentary on alien invasion. With all of this, it seems their emphasis is seriously on hard core science fiction, so let's have a taste of this delicious short film.




It opens with a view of the planet Earth from space, slowly transforming into a red dust-ball which looks curiously like Mars. Based on the beautiful planetary footage used in the film, I am betting Mars was transposed. Aliens in 6 pointed star-like ships have come to visit, presumably having seen our first television transmission into space, that of Hitler open the Berlin Olympics (is that actually true?). A few ships detach and come to the surface which has rolls of sand dunes kind of like Tatooine.



With no talking and alien robes reminiscent of Star Wars, exploration begins. Not much is found, except for what looks like a trilobyte fossil, pre-human. But using their magic wands they do pickup something, and after following a signal and dusting off a hatch, it opens up into a cavernous world filled with cocooned human embryos.



The 2001-ish expectant soundtrack only heightens the experience of this 15 minute short, which again raises the bar with stunning planetary footage. After seeing the trailer of this I was highly excited to get a glimpse of this, and luckily for our readers, the Lowry Bros plan on releasing this online for free sometime in the near future! Angelic from the onset, and intact at it's finish, Quietus would please even the most casual observer. Therefore, we give the film an 8 out of 10, and now I need to go explore more of their work.

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James Arnett (14 years ago) Reply

Quietus is my favorite Lowry Bros film. I saw the footage before it was finished and all of it was beautiful, ingenious and imaginative. Don't miss it.

Anglebender (14 years ago) Reply

Yes, the first few TV signals to leave our planet were of Hitler opening the Olympic Games, but the first radio transmission was made by Reginald Fessenden (a Canadian) on Christmas Eve 1906, thus the Star-of-David starships are actually maple leaves ;)

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