Macabre…ish Horror Review: Cora

 

Cora, 2024/ 1 hr 45 min.

The world suffers an apocalypse caused by some kind of mist. It works fast and death is painful.

Cora (Felicia Rylander) is alive though and she has access to air filtration, technology with censors and no one has been detected for weeks. She survives in a bunker in an underground settlement provided by her employer called Upper Sky Technologies. Aside from the artificial intelligence of the tech, she talks to no one. But she has her daily tasks and protocols to keep her busy.

One day, she has a task to do outside of the bunker, so she masks up, arms herself and makes the trek. Outside is mountains of decay mostly hidden by the zero visibility of the air. Today, there’s an airdrop, the case is dropped into a body of water but luckily the contents are ok.

But it’s not long before, one day, the network goes down and she decides to try to make it to a base near a tower. All the world is silent and grey. She walks through decaying towns, long abandoned vehicles and general disarray until she gets to the tower. The base house below is abandoned, looks like it’s been flooded and is open to the elements.

So, Cora climbs the tower and finds a man named Tim, dead at his post. Suicide. He’s left a note about finding out the truth and that their employer has abandoned them. He writes that he tried to contact the other bases but no one answered. He writes, there is no hope to save the planet and the only thing left to do is end it all. And that’s how Cora met Tim. She radios in to home base for help and gets the prompt, ‘Channel no longer in use.’

Cora decides to trek to head quarters for answers. She camps in the husks of cars she finds along the way. She sees and hides from a group of people, on their own mission but she does make it to Upper City HQ and her credentials get her inside. The technology is still up and running but the place is abandoned. At one terminal she sees ‘Project Terminated, System Files deleted and Evacuation protocols initiated. That happened 977 days ago.

 

Amongst the internal emails, Cora, discovers the company she worked for, were not trying to save the planet but were, in fact, the architect of the mist.

 

 

This info sends her reeling. As she goes to leave, she runs into a violent group who also make into HQ. They are super aggressive and she kills two of them. They were kids, teenagers. 

Cora asks her AI if ‘she’ knew but it wasn’t among the information it had. She runs into more aggressive people in the woods and she’s violently attacked and kidnapped. Once she’s awake she’s immediately interrogated, these people are very anti-Upper City. The man, Joseph (Andreas Ryland), goes on to talk about being rejected by that company and about waiting for that company to figure out and fix what was wrong. He came to the conclusion that the company is to blame for this. And Cora is the newest representative of that company and everything wrong with the world.

He informs her that they burned her suit and tells her to summon the machine he knows she has (a huge mech bird). If she doesn’t he’ll torture her to death. But Cora is tough, she’s survived alone for 10 years. That didn’t happen by accident.

When Blake, the person who beat her up in the woods earlier steps in while Joseph the interrogator steps out. Cora strikes. She kills Blake with his own weapon. She takes his mask and steps outside. She kills another of them, who’s sitting outside and sharpening her weapon. Cora takes her clothes, just in time too because someone named Baker (Christian Bitar) starts shooting. And all that does is summon her ‘machine’ a huge metal bird and it attacks the two people trying to kill her.

She encounters another woman who tells her to grab a weapon because they’re gonna take these people out. So Cora grabs a weapon. As she’s attacked again, Cora removes his mask and for the first time sees what the mist actually does to the human body. This man’s body liquifies from the inside out. And it happens quick!

And the woman who helped her, was a witness to her assault in the woods, she followed them back to their settlement. It was a happy coincidence, really. Cora notices she looks just like her, same face, same gear and Cora has questions.

*Spoiler Alert*

Cora finds out crazy news, she’s a clone. They both are. The other one calls herself B7 and the Cora we know, A1. Part of the Cora project. She also found out about their male counterparts, part of the Tim program. They are tools meant to do the jobs that was too unsafe for them and be disposed of when the task was over.

None of the clones knew they were clones. B7 found out because she found encrypted files. She also found Sam and Ryka projects too. Cora and Tim, replaced them. And the humans evacuated. There are so few left that they couldn’t take the risks so they made disposable agents. B7 confirms the project was abandoned years ago, how could she not know. But Cora, A1, said she didn’t get notice and kept getting deliveries. B7 tells her that her last delivery had a bomb in it, that just didn’t go off. Remember, Cora—A1’s box landed in water??

B7 has been searching for the humans ever since. She wants A1 to come search with her. B7 found a map at HQ and she plans to arrive at wherever the humans are and ask for a place. Take it by force if necessary because she’s been searching for 4 years.

The location is in water and they’re gonna need a boat. They land at an old abandoned building and they are summoned to a phone and monitor to talk by the owner of ‘the house’. They are told that there is a settlement below ground where they can breathe without masks. That yes, they did know the scientists from Upper City and they were a unique, out of touch group. All they had to do is put down their weapons. The pair agreed and a masked armed man arrived to disarm them but B7 shoots him instead.

Two things happen afterward, the building it turned it a prison and they are trapped inside and it is flooded with other armed people. B7 and A1 go to war.

There’s an order to let the Coras leave. And they do but one of them is injured, B7. They seemingly make it to their destination. A1 describes a valley full of maskless people and kids playing with pets as B7 takes her last breaths.

*Spoiler Alert*

A1 takes what’s left of B7’s gear and returns to the boat. After a long journey, she returns to her bunker and finds the hatch open. The place is trashed and the intruder is still there, injured on the couch. It’s the always repugnant, self proclaimed destroyer of everything, Joseph. Cora finally puts an end to his annoying self aggrandizing monologue with an extra hole in his head.

 

• Review

 

This post apocalyptic thriller was so good and only got better as the movie went on. It was directed by Sonny Laguna and Tommy Wiklund. The directors who gave us Wither (Vittra), We Are Monsters and Blood Runs Cold. This movie has the bare minimum of people in it to make this kind of movie. It had just the right amount of violence, a villain that I despised and strong women! The cinematography and landscape really sold the dystopia. I was hooked the whole way through.