Retornar (2021)

-Written by Whitney Scott Bain.

Retornar means reset, and if I could go back in time, I would reset this movie. 

This twenty-minute animated short is painstaking to watch.

In the future, 2222 A.D., the nine last surviving members of the human race, living in the Andes, are confronted and assembled by a female Alien Overlord (on a board that resembles Dance Dance Revolution), while a live chart room on the right side of the screen scrolls with their interviews as the chime in. 

The Alien Overlord toys with them use lightning bolts from her eyes that have no effect, trying to control them on the board or having them bow down to her will. More confusing: there is no background on where the creature came from or who sent her here on her mission to recreate the Earth in their image. 

The plot, if you can call it that, has the Alien Overlord toying with them as they move along or stand motionless on the board—coming to the conclusion, in its final decision, to mutate the group into the Earth as they become one with the planet. 

Again, there is no background on why these nine people are the last ones left or what catastrophe caused the extinction of mankind. There are logical problems that even Albert Einstein would be perplexed by. 

If these nine people are absorbed into the Earth, and they become the Earth, what would be the purpose—especially if no humans exist, or if there is a nefarious plan for the Alien Overlord to use the mutated colony to have plans to conquer and repopulate it using the Earth as its slave? Retornar reminds me of Shades of Battlefield Earth, and we all know how well that movie did at the box office. 

The whole of Retornar looks like it was put together on an Atari 2600, with a game from 1977.

One would think with all the technology created over the centuries in 2222 A.D. on Earth, and the Alien Overlord’s ability to come from wherever, traveling billions, perhaps trillions, of miles to get here, one would have a timeframe for when Earth would be on the brink of extinction. Did the aliens discover the Voyager probe with all our information on it and decide: “What’s up with these guys?” Did they decide to make contact with us with nefarious plans? Radio waves travel through space, so did they pick up these frequencies from really bad television shows thousands of years ago, deciding earthlings are on their way out? CETI was asleep at the wheel on this one. They should have sent more I Love Lucy broadcasts. At least the aliens would have had a good laugh.

Written & Directed by Santiago Tamayo Solar.

Starring ACABDADDY, Araya Guanipa, Chris Vargas, Claudia Burneo, CUARTABABY, etc.

1/10 = AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS