BIOSPHERE - Mark Reviews Movies

Biosphere, IFC Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 6, 2023

The limited setting of Biosphere, about two best friends since childhood sealed in a dome after the end of the world, would also seem to limit how much screenwriters Mark Duplass, who also stars, and Mel Eslyn, who also directed the movie, can do with this story. That the resulting tale is a thematically ambitious one, then, comes as a notable surprise, although the presence of so many ideas also means the movie never quite figures out what to do with any and all of them.

The setup, at least, is intriguing and filled with the potential for some biting satire, which is also undermined by the movie's mounting sincerity. Duplass plays Billy, and Sterling K. Brown plays Ray. The two have known each other and been friends since they were about 6 years old, and after an unspecified man-made or natural disaster (of the anthropogenic variety, obviously), the world has essentially come to an end.

They find themselves, to their knowledge, the last two people on Earth, thanks to a hermetically sealed dome of Ray's design and construction. Billy commissioned the project, by the way, in his position as President of the United States before the apocalypse, and it's probably best not to think too deeply about the logistics and likelihood of such an endeavor being budgeted and completed without anyone but the two of them knowing about it. One has to imagine the rest of the country and the world was too busy dealing with whatever disaster resulted in the eradication of the atmosphere and the planet being consumed by complete darkness to pay much attention to the secret plan of two men.

They're here now, though, and have been for some time. Billy and Ray get by on canned food, a small garden, and the occasional fish, since the garden is maintained by a bathtub filled with the creatures—fewer and fewer as time passes.

The two spend their days with a regimen of exercising, reading, playing video games, and watching movies. How they're capable of—or why they'd bother with—generating enough electricity to power those electronic distractions, not to mention the various appliances and generous lighting within the dome, is another of those questions that's best left unconsidered as much as possible.

Eslyn and Duplass' aims here aren't technical, after all (A brief, introductory tour of the workings of the dome show us enough equipment to create the illusion that it functions as a life-preserving environment). They're more metaphorical and allegorical, which becomes especially clear when the tub's last female fish dies.

Without their underwater pals' ability to procreate and maintain the isolated ecosystem of the pond/garden, things look dire and direr still for Billy and Ray, who not-too-secretly blames his friend's political leanings and governmental policies for ending the world in the first place. Billy kind of resents Ray for being right about that—and for being so much smarter than him.

Before vaguely getting to the point of this story, it should be noted that both Brown and Duplass, having to deal with a lot of dialogue that jumps between assorted subjects and tones, establish an immediate, believable rapport here. It's vital, not only because of the fluid nature of the writing, but also and simply because they play the only two people in this story. For their individual parts, Brown exudes an easy intelligence and the attitude of a man who's always considering and working to solve problems, while Duplass is gregariously foolish—but not so much so that Billy doesn't realize the uncertainty and dread the probable doom of this situation.

The main hook of the following story, announced when one of the male fish undergoes an unexpected and natural kind of sex reassignment, is something that defies logic and our current understanding of evolutionary science. Our capacity to accept it depends entirely on the screenplay's ability, not so much to explain it, but to justify that exists as more than a gimmick. Eslyn and Duplass seem to overcompensate in that regard, leading to more narrative and thematic confusion than is ideal for a premise that already strains credulity.

Basically, one of the friends experiences a major, inexplicable change. The rest of the story has Ray and Billy dealing with it, both as a matter of scientific curiosity and as a potential reason that the dynamic of their relationship might have to change. Under the specific circumstances here, it's difficult to believe that Ray doesn't even consider the ultimate biological conclusion of this transformation until it becomes a reason for some conflict between the friends—as well as a wacky gag, which tonally feels out of place after everything the two go through to arrive at that particular scene.

Beyond that, the whole gimmick is so loaded with concepts of identity, inherent prejudices, evolutionary necessity, and more that Biosphere simply can do little more than raise them without much inspection. It's obvious that the filmmakers don't want this conceit to come across as a meager joke, but unfortunately, it does, especially and unintentionally in how the movie reduces its whole message to being a matter of faith.

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