The Blackout (2019 film)

The Blackout (Russian: Аванпост, romanized: Avanpost, lit. 'Outpost') is a 2019 Russian science fiction action thriller film directed by Egor Baranov and starring Pyotr Fyodorov.[2][3][4][5] It was released in the Russian Federation on November 21, 2019.

The Blackout
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Egor Baranov
Produced by	Valeriy Fedorovich Ivan Golomovzyuk Evgeniy Nikishov
Written by	Natalya Dubovaya Ivan Kapitonov Svyatoslav Podgaevskiy
Starring	Elena Lyadova Svetlana Ivanova Pyotr Fyodorov Konstantin Lavronenko Aleksey Chadov
Music by	Ryan Otter
Cinematography	Sergey Trofimov
Release date	March 15, 2019 (2019-03-15) (Cinequest, San Jose) November 21, 2019 (2019-11-21)
Country	Russia
Language	Russian
Budget	300 000 000 Ruble[1]

Plot

Prologue

When an alarm is triggered at the "Outpost" military base, soldiers take up positions and prepare for battle. It is reported that an unidentified enemy is approaching, creatures larger than humans moving at a speed of twenty kilometers per hour.

A month before this

24 days before the events of the "prologue", serviceman Oleg has a date with Alena. Later they go back to his place. Suddenly the entire world, except for the area around Moscow, along with parts of Belarus, Ukraine and Finland (later called the "Circle of Life") is plunged into darkness. The fate of millions is unknown. Communications are down the rest of the world and only a small number survived in the "circle of life.". A new border was established. along with a defensive perimeter and reconnaissance groups were sent out. They realized that there was an attack on Earth, killing almost everything. To defend against the mysterious enemy, they mobilized an army, and outposts were built.[6][7] After leaving the Circle of Life to conduct a reconnaissance operation Oleg stays in an abandoned house. Later he encounters an unknown person who easily injures Oleg and runs away. The other soldiers try to shoot the stranger, but he gets away.

Outpost protection

The action goes back to the prologue. While preparing for an unknown enemy, electricity is turned off and the outpost is plunged into darkness. After being informed that creatures bigger than humans are emerging from the forest at 20km per hour, they begin to fire, while discovering that the enemy is in fact a massive herd of grizzly bears. The next morning, not all soldiers had survived. Among the survivors is Oleg, whose leg was injured. In hospital, Oleg's doctor gives him a cast and gives a package, asking him to hand it to one person in Moscow. Oleg returns to Moscow, and the next morning Zhenya comes to him for the same package. However, Oleg refuses to give the package until he finds out what is in it. Eugene begins to threaten with a pistol, but Oleg selects him and himself begins to threaten them. At this moment, the newcomer Eid comes in the guise of Oleg’s father and tries to force him to give the package to Zhenya, but Oleg refuses and Eid causes temporary headaches for Oleg so that they can escape with the package. Oleg enraged returns to the outpost and begins to strangle Alena until she says what was in that package. She explains that she herself did not know anything and she was simply forced. At this time, Zhenya and Eid in the secret laboratory take out the severed arm with the virus inside from that package and realize that they are late. At this moment, Eid comes to the patient Sasha, whom the soldiers brought along with him, and asks for his help, since he knows where his brother Ra is, who is behind all this. Four soldiers, led by Marina, are pointing weapons at Eid, but the latter, with the help of supernormal abilities, misleads the soldiers who are pointing weapons at Marina and suggests that he explain everything to them if they save his life. During interrogation, Eid explains that he is an alien from a distant star system that has long died out. They want to move to Earth, because in their constellation the star “Sun” is still young and will live long enough, Ra is behind all this, although before that Eid thought he was the only one on Earth. He arrived on Earth another two hundred thousand years ago, which means that according to his calculations, the ship with their army will be here tomorrow. The problem is that he does not know where Ra is hiding, which controls the minds of ordinary people outside the “circle of life” (this happened because the Moon at that time covered Moscow and other small territories around it with its shadow), but the only one who knows where to find him - Sasha. Eid penetrates Sasha’s head, and he finds out that Ra is on the roof of a skyscraper in Kirov. At that moment Ra himself looked at Sasha and realized that he had been found. Eid decided to leave Sasha at the outpost, and Ra at that time ordered people to launch nuclear missiles at the outpost. However, Eid with Zhenya and the rest of the soldiers, led by Mary, remain alive, as they left the base.

Losses

At this time, Jura joins the satellite-9 group of the outpost and in the middle of the night finds a defenseless teenager in one of the apartments. However, he merely pretended to be shy and took away a knife from one of the soldiers, killing him. A whole crowd of people begins to attack the group under the control of Ra and only Jura and Olya remain alive. They hijack one of the abandoned cars and drive back to the outpost. On the way, they meet the surviving outpost soldiers led by Marina and Major Dovlatov, from whom they learn that the outpost was destroyed by a massive missile strike. Eid explains that if Zhenya went with them, Ra would have killed them otherwise, and the outpost would have left him alone. Gathered together, they go back to Kirov, encountering a crowd of people under the control of Ra, fight through a skyscraper, climb the roof and find Ra. Eid and Ra enter the battle and the Eid brings Ra to the floor, tearing the last chest. At the last moment, Yura thrusts a grenade into Ra’s chest and undermines it. All the people who were under the control of Ra again and again all die and fall to the ground. Only Yura, Oleg, Marina, Olya, Alena, Eid and Lavrin remain alive. Eid explains that this number of people is enough to be reborn again, as people will be able to breed and give birth to many new children. Oleg is furious trying to kill Eid, but Yura stands up for the alien, knocks Oleg to the floor and beats him while Olya shoots him. The survivors do not believe Eid and try to kill him, but with the help of superpowers, he deceives them in every way and makes them kill each other. At the last moment, Lavrin betrays Eid and throws him along with himself from the roof, dying with him in the fall.

Invasion

An alien ship descends from the sky, next to a skyscraper, and a hatch opens. However, the aliens for some reason do not go out. Alena, Olya and Oleg decide to enter the alien ship while the injured Yura shouts in their backs “We will die all the same!” Entering the ship, they find out that all the aliens are still sleeping in cryocapsules and have not woken up. Countdown timers turn on at cryocapsules, and the three main characters decide to break the pipes for oxygen supply, thereby killing them in the capsules themselves, leaving them to die without oxygen. When it remains to destroy the last tube, it turns out that it delivers oxygen to the capsules with the aliens' children, and they decide not to break it. The capsule timers reach zero, the capsules open, and alien children crawl out of their capsules when they see three representatives of planet Earth in front of them. The latter voluntarily throw their weapons on the floor in front of their eyes, proving that they will not harm them.

Cast

• Ksenia Kutepova as Osmolovkaya
• Svetlana Ivanova as Olya
• Pyotr Fyodorov as Yura
• Konstantin Lavronenko as Mayor Dolmatov
• Aleksey Chadov as Oleg
• Lukerya Ilyashenko
• Filipp Avdeev as Zhenya
• Ilya Volkov as Ra
• Artyom Tkachenko as Eid
• Sergey Godin as Lavrin
• Ksenia Kutepova as Marina
• Anastasiya Venkova
• Aleksandr Nedorezov as Spetsnazovets
• Angelina Strechina as Katia

Production

Initially, the film was conceived as a series, but the creators had only the script of the first series.[8] When this series was filmed, Egor Baranov made some changes to the history. After the first series was shot, it became clear that the changes in the script slightly change the intonation and direction of the plot. After that, it was decided to move the script in a slightly different direction. Baranov claims that his film is more anti-war, since he did not try to show the strength of the military, in contrast to films like Transformers and Top Gun. In the film, about 70% of the total timing is done using computer graphics.

Filming

According to Baranov, they worked on the filming of the full film for about six months, and sometimes about a year. On the set of the film, real soldiers with the latest military equipment were involved, who agreed to star in this film, offering only small tips and advice for scenes with their participation. At the same time, the military themselves did not interfere in the script of the film. Filming was completed in May 2019.[9][10]

Music

Released as a part of the film's official soundtrack, the song "fine" was released by American musician Mike Shinoda on October 31, 2019. Shinoda has also released a music video for the song on December 3, which includes scenes from the film.

Release

Marketing

The film was presented by Premier Studios at Comic-Con Russia 2019 along with the film Caramora and the film adaptation of Metro 2033.[11] The Blackout is the only film from Russia included in the program of the American festival Cinequest, combining cinema and high technology.[12] On August 20, 2019, Mir Fantastiki magazine acted as the media partner of this film.[13] On October 23, 2019, the filmmakers, together with Premier Studios, together with MY.GAMES launched the Warface Special Invitational Season 2: Outpost tournament, which combines the world of Warface with this film.[14][15]

Theatrical run and home rentals

The premiere of the film in Russia took place on November 21, 2019, and on November 26 of the same year it was announced that the film will also be released at the USA and in two dozen other foreign countries.[16] In the first week of rental, the film was able to collect only about 100 million rubles by the end of the weekend.[17] In late November, by December, fees amounted to about 144 million rubles.[18]

Critical reception

The film received generally negative reviews from film critics. Stanislav Zelvensky gave the film 2.9 stars out of 10.[19] Vladislav Shuravin of film.ru gave the film four stars out of 10.[20] Pavel Voronkov, in his review of the film for Gazeta.Ru, lamented its running time as overlong, calling it "painfully, criminally, inhumanly drawn out", and wrote that "the flow of entrails and guts will tire, perhaps, even the most bloodthirsty militarist."[21] Sergey Ageev, who wrote a review for fatcatslim.ru, praised The Blackout for its effects and action sequences, but criticized the film's script as "very, very bland", called the acting "lousy" and the plot "ridiculous".[22]

Video game

On November 7, 2019, a browser game was launched, the main feature of which is integration with Google Maps. In the application window, the user can enter any address (or simply indicate the city) and see how his native streets will change in the ensuing post-apocalypse in the universe of this film.[23] Also in the game there will be elements of a shooter, since the main task in the game will be cleaning the streets from aliens.[24]

Sequel

It was announced that the studio plans to continue with a dilogy, the second part of which is due out May 9, 2020.[9]

References

1. "Данные системы ЕАИС для фильма «Аванпост»". Cinema Foundation of Russia. December 17, 2019.
2. Данила Козловский снимется в сериале про вампиров и Романовых
3. 29-летняя Лукерья Ильяшенко похвасталась отличной растяжкой
4. Вышел трейлер российского фильма «Аванпост» с Петром Федоровым и Алексеем Чадовым
5. Канал ТВ-3 готовит эксклюзивный шокирующий контент
6. "«Аванпост» (2019)" (in Russian). Retrieved 2019-05-22.
7. Аванпост, 2018
8. Илья Глазков. "Мы играем на территории «Чёрного зеркала». Интервью с режиссёром «Аванпоста»". Mir Fantastiki (in Russian). Retrieved 2019-11-16.
9. "От создателей «Гоголя» и «Полицейского с Рублевки»: завершились съёмки блокбастера «Аванпост»" (in Russian).
10. "Завершились съёмки дилогии Егора Баранова «Аванпост»". кино-театр.ру (in Russian). Retrieved 2019-05-29.
11. Кот-император. "На Comic Con Russia 2019 пройдут презентации фильмов «Карамора», «Метро 2033» и «Аванпост»". Mir Fantastiki (in Russian). Retrieved 2019-09-27.
12. "Премьера триллера «Аванпост» в Силиконовой долине". TV-3 (in Russian).
13. Кот-император. "«Мир фантастики» выступит инфопартнёром отечественной картины «Аванпост»". Mir Fantastiki (in Russian). Retrieved 2019-08-20.
14. "Разработчики Warface и авторы фильма «Аванпост» проведут совместный турнир". Igromania (in Russian). Retrieved 2019-10-23.
15. Евгения Блинова. "Создатели «Аванпоста» запустили именной турнир Warface Special Invitational Season 2: Аванпост". Mir Fantastiki (in Russian). Retrieved 2019-10-23.
16. "Фантастический фильм «Аванпост» покажут в США и ещё в двух десятках стран". RuFox.новости (in Russian). Retrieved 2019-11-26.
17. Вадим Елистратов. "«Аванпост» стартовал ниже ожиданий и проигрывает второму уик-энду «Форда против Феррари»". DTF (in Russian). Retrieved 2019-11-23.
18. "АВАНПОСТ: кассовые сборы, о фильме". Kinometro.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 2019-12-01.
19. Станислав Зельвенский. "Рецензия на фильм «Аванпост» от Станислава Зельвенского". афиша.daily (in Russian). Retrieved 2019-11-22.
20. Владислав Шуравин. "Чужие на районе". film.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 2019-11-22.
21. Павел Воронков. "Бредущий по лезвию: «Аванпост» — нудный русский киберпанк". Газета.Ru (in Russian). Retrieved 2019-11-19.
22. Сергей Агеев. "Рецензия на фильм «Аванпост» - хороший фантастический сериал, который превратили в средний фильм". fatcatslim.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 2019-11-21.
23. Кот-император. "Создатели «Аванпоста» запустили браузерную игру с интеграцией Google Maps". Mir Fantastiki (in Russian). Retrieved 2019-11-07.
24. "В игре по фильму «Аванпост» можно пострелять в пришельцев на своей улице". reghum (in Russian). Retrieved 2019-11-07.

External links

• The Blackout on IMDb