Chaos Walking movie review: Tom Holland-Daisy Ridley starrer wastes sci-fi premise on typical survivalist chase plot

A male-only society into which a lone female crash lands might have been a take-off point for an intriguing exploration of gender roles and civilisation. Instead, all we have in Chaos Walking — the Tom Holland-Daisy Ridley-Mads Mikkelsen starrer — is a wasted opportunity. Based on the best-selling YA trilogy of the same name by Patrick Ness, Chaos Walking is set on a planet called “the New World” circa 2257 AD. We’re in a rough and tumble, early settler type colony called Prentisstown, christened after its Mayor, David Prentiss (Mikkelsen). Prentisstown’s citizenry comprises entirely of men; the women were all slaughtered in a skirmish with the native species of the planet, the Spackle, not too long after they arrived. Or so we’re told. Here’s another essential attribute about life in the New World: the men’s thoughts are constantly broadcast around them (like having your brain on a microphone), expressed as a shimmer and called “the Noise”. “The Noise is a man’s thoughts unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking,” we’re informed at the start of the film (a line borrowed from the books). It’s probably meant to be profound, but despite being an idea with tremendous possibilities, it gets irritating pretty quickly when watching the film. Especially because most of the men we encounter have fairly uninteresting thoughts. This includes our protagonist Todd Hewitt (Holland), among the youngest members of Prentisstown. In a trope that harks back to Moses and Superman, Todd chances upon a crashed spacecraft in the woods by his farm. The lone survivor is a young woman, Viola (Ridley). She’s part of a mission called the “Second Wave”, whose grandparents set off from Earth 64 years ago to seek out planets where First Wave migrants (like Prentiss, and Todd’s parents) had settled successfully. Todd decides to protect Viola from the Mayor and other men, and help her signal another spaceship that can take her away. This means leaving Prentisstown, and discovering that what he’s assumed to be the truth about his world, is a lie. What this translates into is Todd and Viola making their way through the wilderness of the New World, always just one slender step ahead of Prentiss and his band of pursuers, as they engage in a survivalist adventure. And of course, they’re accompanied by the din of Todd’s unceasing thoughts, which turn quite frequently in the direction of wanting Viola to kiss him (spoiler alert: she doesn’t). There’s a sort of watchfulness that comes with being the only woman in a roomful of men, an instinctive wariness. If Viola feels any of that, beyond the inherent volatility of her situation as an unwelcome stranger in an alien land, it — like most aspects of actual import in Chaos Walking — isn’t dwelt on. Todd’s belief in the Spackle as the enemy when his is the race that intruded on their home is another of these aspects: apart from a brief and matter-of-fact challenge by Viola, his world view isn’t countered or appropriately addressed. Among the rare moments of almost-beauty in the film is when Viola and Todd reach the vast and desolate hulk of a long-crashed spaceship, possibly one that carried the First Wave to the New World. The rotting exteriors lead to a cavernous interior where, if you’re feeling fanciful enough, you might almost imagine an entire ecosystem being transported, filled with hope and idealism about new beginnings. If there’s a sense of Star Wars deja vu, you can brush it aside. Unfortunately, it leads to an all-too predictable ending. On the positive side, at least it wraps up fairly quickly (some might say, abruptly). Holland, Ridley and Mikkelsen are serviceable enough in their roles, as is Nick Jonas in a bit part as Prentiss’ son Davy (and an antagonist to Todd). There’s also a patchy performance by David Oyelowo as a fanatic preacher fixated on the idea of (what else, but) sin, and women as a personification of it. Chaos Walking misses a chance to tell a compelling and resonant story in spite of having all the ingredients to do so. That one of its big, horrifying plot reveals — the violence that men commit against women — is a foregone conclusion speaks to just how far a story like this could have gone, but doesn’t. Chaos Walking is now streaming on Lionsgate Play. Watch the trailer here —