MJ Bassett

(On Cable TV, October 2021) The one essential element to any survival-in-nature story is the desire to see the protagonists survive. Considering this, it’s really not a good sign when, ten minutes into Endangered Species, you want all five main characters to be eaten by lions as quickly as possible. Starting out on a truly bad footing, the film quickly sketches a family of five entitled, arrogant, overextended Americans landing in Kenya and immediately complain about everything. When things don’t turn out their way (what with a money-obsessed dad trying to cut vacation costs due to a layoff he’s trying to conceal), they simply ignore one warning after another on their way to the wilderness. When a rhino overturns their car (their fault for getting too close and in between mama rhino and her cub), the most merciful thing would have been for all of them to die right there. Instead, the bickering continues, more dumb mistakes are made and the entire thing just keeps going for longer than we’d like at a length of 101 minutes. There’s more merriment when the least obnoxious character gets pounced upon by a leopard, but don’t cheer too soon: he’s back a few scenes later. The elements hurriedly mentioned in the film’s first few minutes all come back in play, and that most notably includes poachers in the film’s last third. Blithely ignoring its own tone-deafness, Endangered Species works itself up to a heartfelt denunciation of poaching that frankly falls flat given the exasperating nature of its characters deserving to be poached. There are a few signs that the film isn’t completely unaware of its characters’ unlikability (most notably in criticizing the oilman dad as an even bigger predator than the poachers), but those merely serve to make the film even more unlikable and cynical. Even the ironic title just seems self-pompous. It’s not completely dull to watch—the Kenyan scenery is colourful and there’s some unintentional amusement at the overuse of CGI animals—but the result is so incredibly flawed that it’s a wonder no one ever looked at the script and said, “You’re kidding, right?” before it was too late and the film was already shooting. Despite writer-director MJ Bassett’s experience in wildlife photography, this isn’t one of his finest works—and in a filmography that includes the underwhelming Solomon Kane and Silent Hill: Revelation, that’s not saying much.