Skal: Fight for Survival (Canada, 2023)

A schizophrenic film that is as fragmented and nonsensical as its possible production history. Though sold as a standalone 2023 movie, it appears to actually be a movie made from editing together eight individual episodes of a 2017 web series — which, in turn, was based on director Benjamin Cappelletti's earlier short film, Skål (2015). All projects, whatever their form, concern themselves with a young, successful internet influencer confronted with the apocalypse — and unless Cappelletti moves on to something else soon, might offer evidence that he is a bit of a one-trick pony flogging a dead horse. 

Trailer to

Skal – Fight for Survival:

Who knows how much was lost when the eight episodes (of unknown length) got cut down to a surprisingly short but oddly long-feeling 1h17m movie, but the final product is an uneven ride that starts out extremely well but quickly devolves into un-interesting predictability. Skal: Fight for Survival begins at party held by internet influencer Arthur (Evan Marsh of Vicious Fun [2020 / trailer] and Our House [2018 / trailer]), who is celebrating having achieved 3 million subscribers. An apparently obnoxious party boy celebrating a truly Gen Z event — really? No, thank you.

But what could easily have become boring instead achieves a meta level of humor by Arthur's continual breaking of the fourth wall to comment on both the events around him, the people closest to him — Darren (Darren Eisenhauer of Neverknock [2017 / trailer], his best buddy along for the ride, and Emma (Olivia Scriven of Blood Quantum [2019 / trailer]), his best gal-pal, who has long been the secret apple of his eye — and his actions and interactions with others. (The last, initially, above all with his hapless fan Steve [Chris Sandiford of Thanksgiving (2023 / trailer), Strangers in the Room (2023 / trailer), and the hilariously terrible cluster-fuck box-office bomb that is Moonfall (2022 / trailer)].) This breaking of the fourth wall continues even as the events of a TV show that Arthur has been cast in (as a result of his internet fame) slowly get intertwined into the narrative, and, ultimately, is what makes the beginning of the movie fun and entertaining, if not intriguing, and not stupid.

Once the unexplained apocalypse kicks in, however, Skal: Fight for Survival begins to fall apart. The cop show morphs into the actual events of a social breakdown, with "Frank the Cop" (Trevor Hayes of The Dark Hours [2005 / trailer] and Die [2010 / trailer]) suddenly becoming a "real" character even as the breaking of the fourth wall becomes more extreme and, ultimately, less successful. Another character, Malika (the typecast-as-a-nurse Mariah Inger of Mom [2024 / trailer], End of the Line [2007 / trailer] and Lost Junction [2003 / trailer]), suddenly materializes and, despite the amazingly effective apocalyptic landscape that arrives with a sandstorm, the movie quickly begins to wallow in predictability as it also progressively looks more and more like a tightly budgeted television movie or series premiere.

Worse, however, is that the movie also becomes completely uninteresting. The satire and playfulness gone, Skal: Fight for Survival is little more than a stale, uninteresting and extremely generic post-apocalyptic tale, complete with plot developments seen a thousand times before. As the movie loses all its satirical edge and bite by this point, it is hard to believe that the musty familiarity is intentional persiflage; on the other hand, it suddenly becomes easy to speculate that a one-trick pony might be hoping for a sequel... 

The last half of Skal: Fight for Survival pretty much undermines all that is intriguing in the first half, ultimately rendering the movie both uninteresting and run-of-the-mill and anything but relevant. Don't bother with this one... or, if you do: turn it off when the shit starts hitting the fan "for real".

A public service announcement from a wasted life: