The Truckman Review

The Truckman is a post-apocalyptic short film that’s currently on the festival circuit.

In the near future, a water shortage has led to chaos around the world and people have reacted in different ways. Some go to the cities to find water, and others try and survive in the wild. One group of survivors has settled in one of the remaining forests. But their peace is under threat due to a group of zealots.

I will admit I have a professional relationship with many of the crew members who worked The Truckman. Many of them also worked on my most recent short film. However, I think of myself as an honest critic and can put aside personal feelings when reviewing.

Post-apocalyptic fiction is a genre I enjoy a lot: whether it’s serious drama like The Road and The Rover, genre fun like the Mad Max series, and everything in between. The Truckman aimed to be more on the more serious side since it was a weighty drama about character relationships, yet still wanted to be entertaining in a horror movie way when the action kicks in.

Writer/director Andrea M. Catinella aimed to make his short with as much story as possible into a 20-minute short. There were emotional hooks involving the two main characters, John (Benjamin Peter Jones) and Deacon (Joseph Emms). John and Deacon were father and son and there was clearly tension between the pair before the apocalypse which was made worse by them arguing their course of action since Deacon’s wife, Rebecca (Yasmine Alice) was about to give birth.

There were a lot of character dynamics that were explored quickly in the short. The plan for The Truckman would be to adapt it into a feature-length film and the characters and the world they inhabit would be expanded upon. It would be interesting to see how humanity would react when this basic resource becomes so scarce.

From a technical standpoint, The Truckman was excellent. The cinematography and music were particular highlights. I should know, I work with Raffaele Nocerino and Simone Micieli and they are great at their jobs. Nocerino gave the film a scene of fluidity to the cinematography, especially when the action kicked in. I am a sucker for long, handheld camera shots and it was effective when the camera followed the zealots as they attacked the camp. Micieli is a talented composer and his work on The Truckman was intense which fitted the short.

The Truckman did have a setting issue. Most of the short took place in a lush forest which was strange for a story about the world undergoing a global water shortage. Unless this shortage was a sudden event it wouldn’t make much sense. The setting should have been dry and desolate with all the plants dead or dying, like in The Road or Vesper. This was probably a budgetary issue and if The Truckman does get into a feature film then the team would need to find more suitable locations.

The Truckman was a solid short film that acted as a calling card for Catinella. It sets up a bleak scenario with plenty of story possibilities for a feature film.