51 Degrees North – Review

As you read this, an asteroid is heading for Earth. Somewhere out there in the blackness of the cosmos, a miles-long slab of primordial rock is hurtling at thousands of miles an hour toward our tiny blue planet, threatening to destroy life as we know it in a few moments after impact. This sounds terrifying in real life, but hugely exciting as the premise of a movie – as box office behemoths Armageddon and Deep Impact prove. But that could never really happen. Could it?

51 Degrees North, a cautionary tale about the very real possibility of an asteroid colliding with Earth and with little warning, and our own modern obliviousness (and subsequently, oblivion) and apathetic affectation toward such a pulled-from-the-movies circumstance, is directed by  Grigorij Richters and scored by astronomy enthusiast – and Queen guitarist – Brian May. We follow Damon Miller, a wildly successful YouTuber (yes, you hate him already) who ditches his more popular dog-walking videos when he becomes obsessed with the countless rocks floating around millions of miles above us – and what would happen to us all, if just one hit now. In a few words: the End of the World. Feeling like the only sane person in an insane world, Damon marches on with his asteroid-awareness campaign, regardless of what his friends, family and loved ones are beginning to think of him. Soon he finds himself in an inner turmoil, fuelled by his preoccupation with huge rocks and spiralling toward madness – and no one is listening to him.

It’s difficult to see what Richters was hoping to achieve with 51 Degrees North. It amateurishly straddles the line between paranoid thriller and finger-pointing polemic, and in the intervening confusion, dies from exhaustion, having torn itself apart by its own self-engineered tug-of-war. If its intents are muddled, then its execution is labyrinthine, never committing wholly to a hand-held, faux documentary aesthetic, nor making the most of its few almost-interesting characters (Miller’s agent is a fiery, interesting business type, but is never allowed to form properly in the context of the meandering story). So in the detritus of the movie’s own implosion, what’s left to salvage? Moritz von Zeddelmann is entirely decent as Miller, but is never really given a chance to shine as a budding fanatic; paranoia is served up in ripe handfuls, and a definite uneasy atmosphere permeates the film’s every frame.

Cinema has routinely proved itself as the most articulate artform when it comes to detailing the psychological intricacies of obsession. Unfortunately for 51 Degrees North, there’s such a small understanding of what makes cinema tick in the first place, it rarely comes together enough for us to take notice of its message. But we do experience the gradual, reluctant realisation that Miller’s suspicions aren’t delusions, but clear-eyed warnings: an asteroid could hit us right this instant, before you’ve even finished readi-