YOUNG ONES. A very good western in a science fiction setting

“Young Ones” is not a film about activists gluing themselves to roads or vandalizing works of art.

Set in an unspecified future, the United States is grappling with a climate crisis: drought has devastated most arable land, and water has become a luxury commodity. Ernest Holm lives in a container home near what used to be fertile fields with his teenage children—his son Jerome and daughter Mary. (His wife, Katherine, is in the hospital after an accident caused by a drunk Ernest.) Ernest makes a living by delivering supplies to workers at a government-backed water distribution plant, whose owners hold a market monopoly. He believes that his land will once again yield crops if only it can be irrigated—and he persistently, but unsuccessfully, tries to convince the water distributors to help.

One day, Ernest outbids a young man named Flem Lever at an auction for a robot to assist with farm work. Flem is romantically involved with Mary and has his own plans for the land around the Holm residence.

Jake Paltrow was, in a sense, destined for a career in film: his father was director and producer Bruce Paltrow, his mother is actress Blythe Danner, and his older sister Gwyneth needs no introduction. Jake honed his craft in television, directing episodes of shows such as High Incident (1997), NYPD Blue (1997–2004), and The Others (2000). His first feature film was The Good Night (2007), followed by the documentary De Palma (2015), the drama June Zero (2022), and finally Young Ones. The film was primarily financed by companies from Ireland and South Africa, and featured an international cast including Nicholas Hoult, Michael Shannon, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Elle Fanning. It was filmed in the Namaqualand region of South Africa’s Northern Cape Province between February and March 2013.

Young Ones premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in early 2014 and was released in U.S. theaters later that year. It grossed just over $100,000 worldwide, a clear box office failure. That’s unfortunate, because it’s a strong film, drawing on the conventions of the Western and placing them in a science fiction setting. The sci-fi elements are understated—reduced essentially to a four-legged robot (the BigDog model created by Boston Dynamics) and hospital equipment that allows Ernest’s paralyzed wife to move. The post-apocalyptic world of Young Ones is a far cry from George Miller’s Mad Max (1979), its sequels, or countless knock-offs—there are no feral car or motorcycle gangs, mass rapes, cannibalism, or other overused tropes. Instead, the film is almost restrained in its depiction of a world in collapse.

Paltrow is clearly more interested in the people who inhabit this world, as evidenced by the film’s structure: it’s divided into three chapters, each named after and focused on a main character—Ernest Holm, Flem Lever, and Jerome Holm. This makes Young Ones a character study, particularly of the rise and fall of an ambitious, ruthless man, drawing comparisons to Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood (2007). Gradually, the film shifts into a tale of revenge, which—combined with its other elements (harsh, sun-scorched landscapes, borderland setting, struggle to tame nature, lawlessness, conflict with locals, etc.)—aligns it even more closely with the Western genre. All these threads come together satisfyingly in the film’s final act.

And while Young Ones is mostly escapist entertainment, it doesn’t shy away from weighty ethical questions, chief among them: Does the end always justify the means?