No doubt to Alan Titchmarsh’s great relief, the horticultural arm of the post-apocalypse flick is finally entering the growth phase, with the likes of Annihilation, The Last of Us and now this lightweight effort from Chinese director Lin Zhenzhao. The hubris here is that mankind has overcompensated for the desertification of the planet with cutting-edge research to promote plant growth, accidentally creating a super-species of sentient flora that has choked the Earth, and whose roving vines hunt down people to snack on.
Yang Hao (Mickey He) is a bunkered-in dad skulking in the ruins with daughter Yuanyuan (Zhang Mingcan), fending off the triffids with UV light torches. His wife, one of the researchers responsible, has already become fertiliser, and he’s frantic when Yuanyuan is plucked from her bed by the creepers. But after rescuing her, they manage to hook up with a squad of crack soldiers from the global “Joint Command Centre” out running some sketchily defined save-the-world errand.
Restart the Earth is not a film rooted in serious scientific study – or scrutiny of its own internal logic. Apart from the quickly passed-over UV thing, the steroidal plants don’t have any consistent behavioural traits. So Lin doesn’t so much build tension around that as put his squad through a 90-minute rat-run through a garden centre from hell. But the art design has a painterly Ozymandian splendour and, even if Lin seems to have cut-and-pasted his serpentine creature design from his own Snakes trilogy, the visual effects often have a homespun, almost Michel Gondry-esque look that’s a bit more charming than the run of the digital mill.
Apart from the standard Chinese-blockbuster predilection for absurd levels of self-sacrifice (and copious tears all round afterwards), this doesn’t take itself too seriously and delivers just enough schlocky but pacy B-movie thrills.
