Review of Tomorrow, When the War Began (2010) by Dawdlingpoet — 26 Nov 2021

This is an action adventure film, which features themes including the military, camping, shootouts and pacifism. I found this film a little underwhelming at first but it did become somewhat surprisingly engrossing after a while. There is a fairly decent variety of characters present - a religious girl, the 'high school hottie' girl type and numerous others. Its far from greatly original but I found the action scenes, the more faster paced ones to be relatively engaging regardless.

I thought the plot was a little confusing at times - I suppose it isn't one to overly analyse as such, although it is an adapatation of a well regarded YA (Young Adult, i.e. books written for teenagers) novel. I didn't find myself utterly losing interest in it, so it was still a semi-decent watch regardless. It is certainly pretty far fetched but then it is a dystopian/war based story, so it is somewhat inevitable. I've noticed that Australia have produced numerous examples of these kinds of rather dark toned films - on a smaller budget than your average Hollywood equivalent but some may be better for dealing with some subject material which may not naturally be covered by Hollywood equivalent films, although not so much this particular film due to its younger target audience. From a visual point of view, this isn't as gory or explicitly violent as other dystopian action/thrillers but yet I definitely did feel quite tense and gripped at times, which just goes to show that it isn't always the visual content alone that makes or breaks such films.

Cast wise, there weren't any members who I recognised by name from other films. A selection of these include Caitlin Stasey as Ellie Linton, Lincoln Lewis as Kevin Holmes, Rachel Hurd-Wood as Corrie MacKenzie and Chris Pang as Lee Pakkam. The films characters are 90% teenagers/adolescents, with a quite noted lack of named adults, other than one or two parents briefly shown at the start. There was something surprisingly eery/spooky about this, as the seriousness of the plot situation becomes more clear.

Content wise, the film contains drug references and some brief sex references, some relatively mild violence involving fast machine gun fire, arson and the like, although very little in the way of particularly graphic injury is shown on screen. There are a number of fast paced chases which bring with them an element of threat and peril, of course, which could upset particularly young viewers and there is some moderately strong language used at times as well. Due to this, the film has been given a 12a rating in the UK.

For what it is, its a decent watch but I imagine it won't overly appeal to everyone and while the plot felt a little flawed and the ending may well frustrate some, due to it leaving the viewer with many unanswered questions, equally some people may like it for leaving the viewer to come to their own conclusions. I mention this so that anyone who hates being left with unanswered questions knows to give this a wide berth.

Overall, if this sort of film appeals to you then yes, I'd recommend it. Its not exactly perfect as a film but I found it fairly gripping and engrossing at times, so you could do worse. The visual effects were neither amazing nor seriously underwhelming, the plot was interesting but I felt there were a few holes, yet it didn't stop me from continuing watching the film. Since I mostly enjoyed it, I imagine most people would probably find it reasonably good, so on that basis I would recommend it.