Atomica

USA • 2017 • 81m •

• Directed by: Dagen Merrill. • Starring: Tom Sizemore, Sarah Habel, Dominic Monaghan, Phil Austin, Tony Doupe, Hahn Cho, Jennifer Spriggs, Sarah-Eve Gazitt. • Music by: Christian Davis.

In the near future, when communications go offline at a remote nuclear power plant isolated in the desert, a young safety inspector, Abby Dixon, is forced to fly out to bring them back online. Once inside the facility, mysterious clues and strange behaviors cause Abby to have doubts about the sanity, and perhaps identities, of the two employees onsite.

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Trailer

2:04

Review:

The film takes place about a century in the future. A company (Oxzilla?) has created a tri-fission reactor (whatever that is) that works on converting radioactive waste into atomic energy to power the world (nuclear physics says not possible, you really need a neutron source, but I just went with it). The opening talks about a site where they had three atomic accidents, however there were tri-fisson reactors around the world on waste sites. So I am guessing this was the accident site.

Abbey Dixon (Sarah Habel) a young engineer without much field experience gets the short straw when a remote location loses contact and has to go out there wearing a form fitting personal "radiation" suit. Suits are for contamination and not radiation, but I let that one go as Hollywood and the general public don't know the difference and interchange the words, liking "radiation" to describe everything radioactive. When she arrives she is greeted by a half-wit with a bad cough named Robinson (Dominic Monaghan). For the next hour or so we watch her run tests on the facility as Robinson watches her. She is attempting to locate Dr. Zek not knowing the type of character Tom Sizemore plays in films.

Eventually the drama plays out.

First off if an area gets contaminated, they pave over it and don't let it breath to the atmosphere. If you drive into the parking lot of a nuclear facility that has eight inches deep of paving, turn around. Another issue is that Abbey claimed the Becquerel level had increased. Becquerel is a unit for contamination. I doubt that is what she meant. It sounds scientific, but Gray or Sievert would have been the correct phrases. It she had said, "The Gray level has increased" that would not have worked. Sievert or milliSievert would have been the best. If you have radiation sickness, you don't walk around like you have a sore throat. If you are not hurling chunks or sitting on the bowl, you will have no energy to be active.

PLOT SPOILER CLUES: The film was shot In Washington State, downwind of Hanford. In 1949 Hanford did a "Green Run" experiment where they released a few dozen curies of I-131. They studied the plume and the animals within the plume. The public found out in the 1980's. The sites for government nuclear facilities and bomb test sites are located, according to government documents, where the down winders are a "limited use" (expendable) segment of the population. I am sure the anti-nuclear crowd had the Green Run in mind when they made this film which unfortunately demonstrated they knew nothing about reactors or radiation. But hey, it is the thought that counts.

Guide: No swearing or sex. Dominic Monaghan looks at Sarah Habel in the shower. We get to see all of him and the back of her head.

Review by Michael Ledo from the Internet Movie Database.