Panorama

Maestranza Films

BERLIN -- "What would you do if you knew that mankind has only three days left before extinction?" asks this awkward low-budget sci-fi movie from director F. Javier Gutierrez. "Before the Fall" will not receive the same international attention given to recent Spanish thrillers and horror films. More likely it will be confined to domestic market.

As an asteroid heads to Earth, all means to destroy or divert it have failed. There is no chance for mankind to survive after the impact in 72 hours.

Rosa and her son Ale, inhabitants of a small village in Laguna, are struck by other news: convicts have escaped from jail, and among them a criminal likely to go after Rosa's family. Rosa and Ale travel to a remote farm where Rosa's brother lives with his children. The children, who seem to be left alone, haven't heard of the approaching apocalypse.

The film strangely shifts from the sci-fi dimension it has established (with some efficiency, in spite of very low-budget means) to an ordinary revenge story. Quite absurdly, none of the characters seems to mind that the world is coming to an end: The criminal wants to kill and the victims try to survive.

This lack of coherence doesn't seem to bother the director, who accumulates in the last 30 minutes repellent sequences involving child molesting and killing.