Good science fiction talks about the times, and Domain has done it twice in four years.

The email reached my inbox in mid-May. The reader kept things concise.

Topic: Do you remember the domain?

Body: I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/12/the-domain-review-the-internet-can-be-worse-than-humanity-ravaging-epidemics/

Two months after a global pandemic, obviously staying for a moment, I can’t say that I have given much thought to a science fiction B movie that I once saw several years ago. But when I mentioned it, I remembered instantly and vaguely Domain. I captured a screening for Ars before a small sci-fi film festival in December 2016, and the premise stuck with me more than the plot or any individual performance. In this blatantly indifferent movie (read(high-concept, super-specific, low-budget aesthetic), a viral pandemic called the Saharan flu continues to accumulate a body count. “The World Health Organization says it is potentially deadly to civilization,” public broadcasts declare in the first minutes of the film after 5,000 deaths (alone!) Spread across Germany, Egypt and Italy.

Ho-hum, another pandemic movie, you say. We have a million of those. In fact, not even writer / director Nathaniel Atcheson had been thinking recently about Domain in light of our current situation (I called and asked in June). But what happens in the movie after his fictional pandemic? Domain eerily prophetic four years later. The film follows seven people from across the United States, but most of the action takes place in similar-looking bunkers because humanity has been forced to quarantine en masse. And in this alternative version of today, the government requires these groups to monitor each other by communicating through an ever-present video chat: it is not Zoom, FaceTime, Google Meet or Skype; It is the titular domain.

“Probably two or three weeks passed [the pandemic] before I know it and connect the connection myself, “Atcheson tells Ars.” I literally made a movie about this exact scenario: People are home for a long time and all they have is this web interface. Real world logistics is a little different, obviously we can go out, we just aren’t supposed to. So maybe that stopped me from making the connection sooner, but I’m a little ashamed of how long it took me to think about it. I have the poster on my wall in my living / dining room, and I was sitting here eating and looking at the poster. ‘Oh my God.'”

However, like the anonymous Ars reader, others who had seen the movie had been making the connection. Domain It hit DVD and VOD in 2018, and the movie sat on Amazon Prime waiting in plain sight as we all started having more time in the living room than we expected this spring. Since then, Atcheson has noticed an increase in user reviews saying so. And when we revisited our review of the movie this spring, Phew, Does it make you do a double take?

If the deadly flu destroys the world and we’re all on Skype together, it won’t end well …

As the dependence of the film can indicate at one point in the plot of a social network, Domain It has something to say about the nature of our interactions through digital media. It is a place that empowers consequence-free action for trolls like Orlando, a place that can feel so isolated that suicide seems viable, and a place where a true mystery can spread endless theories of fear …

DomainThe fictional president oversees a country that is ransacked by a viral outbreak and chooses to save everyone by focusing on just a few. And within this new world, intimidation and fear could go crazy. As with any good science fiction, there is probably a lesson somewhere.

Of course, when Atcheson was writing Domain sometime before 2015, I had no intention of predicting or speaking to life in 2020 (or in the face of very unexpected changes in the fall of 2016 when Domain debuted, for that matter). Without spoiling anything, neither the viral pandemics nor the horrors of life always online inspired Atcheson to sit down and write Domain. Instead, a separate issue that was still on the public mind did: the criminal justice system. Domain It turns out to be a twisted movie, a concept with which Atcheson has a love / hate relationship. It can make a movie more complex and interesting, but “usually it’s often just a ‘Gotcha!'” He says. “They don’t always have thematic relevance, so I wanted this one to make you go back and think about everything you saw.”

By making an independent film that he knew he would have a hard time getting to his feet as he didn’t feature a star, Atcheson finally kept Domain in a tight ~ 90 minutes to maximize your chance to find an audience and win festival screenings. As such, the twist may not be as fully explored as some viewers would like. But the filmmaker told Ars that he actually had a sequel in mind if the opportunity arose, and that the story would lean much more toward ideas in DomainThe final act. And if Atcheson had a chance to redo things (or change Domain in a series on Netflix or Quibi or whatever) those ideas would be emphasized faster and more.

“The virus is interesting, but pandemics have occurred. People have made films about people waiting isolated from viruses or viruses that plague the world. For the original concept, this novel inspired me Station eleven, which is about to adapt to a television series, “says Atcheson.” The concept is: everyone loves a good viral thriller. And for me, I wanted to distinguish that from the crowd by having this other thematic boost, which is this double hit of the virus and then [what happens in the end, #NoSpoilers]. Today’s Black Lives Matter protests and justice reform have made the film more relevant than I could have hoped for. I never wanted it to have a happy ending, because that didn’t feel appropriate to the story. I couldn’t see a way to resolve it into something positive for these characters. “

Given the strange state of cinema in 2020, revisiting small titles, possibly overlooked in recent years, has become one of the few reliable ways to watch new (or at least new to you) movies. And revisiting Domain, which is still available on VOD and Amazon Prime, actually got me thinking of some other newer movies. The elegant and claustrophobic High lifeClaire Denis’ space movie with Robert Pattinson shares a high aesthetic and similar vibe (“I actually saw that at the beginning of the quarantine,” says Atcheson. “I was definitely going to do something similar, at least with art direction, although obviously I’m not Claire Denis. I thought it was great “).

But Domain It makes me think more about another Amazon Prime movie:The vast of the night. These two films share an approach to storytelling: Take a familiar archetype (pandemics and aliens), apply your vision and voice, and give audiences enough to think without offering an explicit message, allowing viewers to draw their own conclusions.

When Ars spoke to Vast of the night Filmmaker Andrew Patterson last fall believed that should be the goal of both good science fiction and good movies in general. They have captivating central stories and ideas and themes that are timeless enough for different generations or time periods to see their reality within. “Good movies will be about something else, depending on the time they are seen. They can meander through time,” Patterson said, citing a Lawrence of Arabia Rewatch that drew the LGBTQ nuances of the film to his attention. “So I hope we have made a movie that in 40 years is about defining a family or in 30 years is about something else.”

It’s only been four years Domain, But the film has already lived and resonated in two potentially historical and different times in the history of the United States (if not the world). Not too shabby for a young filmmaker’s little science fiction movie B.

Listing image for Fons PR / Other Worlds Austin