Jeff Kenny

(On TV, April 2022) Now here’s a weird one – a very low-budget science fiction film blending semi-philosophical themes with stoner comedy and elementary thriller elements. We begin in a dorm room, where an absurdly intelligent young man wakes up next to a naked and equally brainy young woman. So far so good – except when it looks as if they’re the last remaining people on campus, that it becomes clear that the young man is trying to escape Earth, that the young woman has unresolved issues echoing from her past as a devout Catholic, and that men-in-black “agents” are after them with unfriendly intentions. Clearly put together with twine and good intentions, Manifest Destiny Down: Spacetime is a film that seems to have one set (the dorm room), access to a campus for some early-morning location shooting, and one green screen used for everything else. Half the cast of six are also producers or writers-directors (Jonathan T. Baker and Bo D.) Most of the film is a running dialogue between Lexie Lowell and Jeff Kenny, as the film plays with science fiction tropes in decidedly irreverent terms, clearly stemming from a tradition of stoner comedies more than anything else. A strange fog permeates the cinematography (it may be a digitally-added fog, and this is not an exaggeration), which reflects the aimless, sometimes amiable way the film goes about telling its story, moving from the dorm room to a car and then again to the dorm room in time for the universe-saving climax. Scatological humour becomes as important as digressions about the nature of time, multiverses, religion and quantum physics – while sitting on the toilet to save the universe. It’s cheap, incoherent, and probably not as clever as it thinks it is and yet Manifest Destiny Down: Spacetime does make for interesting viewing. It’s got an endearing DIY energy to it, some rough 1980s-style charm and a willingness to go down some strange pathways, despite having only a faction of the means required to do justice to its vision. Lowell looks cute in thigh-high white stockings and makes a great straight-woman to the wild antics of her on-screen partner, while Kenny looks as if he digested everything from Young Einstein to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure to Real Genius in his quest to play a stoner genius. This is not a movie for everyone, but if you happen to be on or around the same strange vibe as its creators, then there’s a chance you’ll keep watching just to see where it’s going. (The answer, a Russian rap video, is not at all what was expected.)  Putting on my (retired) Science Fiction movie critic’s hat, I find that Manifest Destiny Down: Spacetime is one more good example of how SF tropes are making their way not just in the mainstream, but in other subcultures that are ready to put their own spin on them. The result is a fascinating cross-hybridization of themes and approaches. At least for some viewers.