Day 98 - The Man from Earth



Day 98            The Man from Earth [2007]
                          
Screenplay                    Jerome Bixby
Director                         Richard Schenkman
Cinematography            Afshin Shahidi
Music                            Mark Hinton Stewart
Leads                            David Lee Smith, John Billingsley, Tony Todd, Richard Riehle
Production                     Falling Sky Entertainment

IMDb                                 7.9/10
Rotten Tomatoes                N/A

This film was recommended to me by a friend. From the ratings it looks like it was a bad recommendation but don’t be put off! It’s surprisingly engaging once you get passed the fact that it looks like it was filmed in the sixties. With a budget of only $200,000 it’s easy to understand why the cinematography, music and acting are all so bad. Perhaps it’s not the actors, the director probably has a part to play. The concept behind the film and Bixby’s writing are what kept me interested. The film is about a man, John Oldman (Lee Smith), who tells his fellow college professors that he is a cave man and that he has been alive for 14,000 years. Among the professors are a biologist, a psychiatrist, an anthropologist, a devout Christian art historian and an archaeologist. Therefore, between them they have the capacity to effectively quiz John about his claim, though none of them believe him of course. It was original yes. But as convincing as John’s answers were to all the questions thrown his way, the questions could have been better, and the acting was infuriatingly bad from those asking the questions. I would have liked to see this film with a bigger budget and further script development to make it more convincing. What I liked about it is that it really does make you wonder about this glorious planet, and it’s good to stretch the mind every once in a while.  

Acting                            1.5 / 4
Writing                           2.5 / 4
Cinematography                1 / 4
Music                             1.5 / 4
HWF rating                  2 / 4

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