One by One
(2014)
This first came on my radar last year, loosely labelled as “the film that got Rik Mayall killed” (although he managed to shoot another first). And more particularly, noting its importance as a portent of current times. I didn’t bite until now, as I didn’t think it sounded much cop. And… It is certainly topical, I’ll give One by One that. Unfortunately, however, it falls into the great yawning trap awaiting all dramatised polemics: being both patronising and preachy. And not very dramatic.
It’s very rare that such approaches do work – JFK (1991) is an obvious exception – and the more problematic that Diane Jessie Miller’s film finds itself following a path that closely resembles the Christian conversion movie. Dion (Heather Wilson) is “born again” as a conspiracy believer – and more to the point, a believer in the population-reduction agenda – by means of induction by a small cadre of proselytisers to the cause headed by Mayall’s Ernest.
I’ve seen a few other reviews reference the quartet – quintet with Dion – as a cult, but they’re only a cult in as much converts to The Celestine Prophecy – which unsurprisingly gets a mention – bigging it up at Book Group are. Albeit, they admittedly share the self-righteousness that afflicts the religiously devout, waxing holier than thou about their new acolyte being “enslaved in a society unable to do anything but consume”. Of course, that’s widespread amongst the awake generally, a malaise requiring one to exclaim “I’ve been saying this from the start” – or in David Icke’s case, “for THIRTY years!” – at every opportunity. A pose guaranteed to put off anyone on the fence, let alone anyone disinclined to learn more and convinced you’re a loony anyway.
That said, Mayall’s a welcome restrained presence, avoiding a nutty or over-didactic performance. Which rather suggests the subject matter was close to his heart or – given the movie’s evidently ultra-low budget and limited resources – he had pals somewhere in the production. The insufferable smugness mostly comes from John (Duncan Wigman), constantly cracking an inanely knowing grin as Ernest explains some new titbit to gormless Dion.
Jeff is introduced as a character devoted to crude innuendos, but he soon drops this façade when his true self, that of a sensitive seeker, is revealed. He informs Dion that nobody owns their car, offers the lowdown on the 2012 Olympics logo, and “cleverly” confronts climate change protestors on their implicit support of population reduction (but, such is the messy characterisation, he’s also required to offer scepticism to more overtly spiritual leanings: “Jesus Christ, what are we, the fucking Waltons? Man up”).
Dion works with upbeat Lily (Katina Nare), prone to speaking in Celestine Prophecy/Conversations with God platitudes: “Everyone’s got a story to tell, and we’re all on the same path”. Her dad (Steven Macaulay, who doesn’t look nearly old enough) is also given to such sage pronouncements as “You don’t need money to live” before backtracking somewhat when put on the spot.
One by One’s big failing, besides the rudimentary nature, is that there’s nothing to hang the message on. Dion doesn’t know the real deal. Chum Lily dies. Dion gets with the programme via a crash-course montage of laptop research (“She’s got to do it herself” John tells Ernest, presumably in much the same way one has to ask Jesus into one’s life oneself). Dion ditches slimy police boyfriend Jeff (Sean Meyer). She then tries to wake Jeff, who reacts in the kind of incredibly daft fashion one might except from a daytime Aussie soap, waving a gun about (to be fair to him, this might be because he spent an entire night with a laptop microwaving his testicles). Fortuitously, that’s just when martial law is declared, with the result that he leads the charge in population reduction.
Utopia dealt with many of themes mooted here, and whether or not Dennis Kelly’s piece was expressly designed as predictive programming – as a Channel 4 commission, it was implicitly sanctioned, even if did get cancelled – the reason it succeeded was that it found a storyline in which to weave its conspiratorial musings (I say succeeded guardedly, as I was much less impressed with its second run). For the most part, Miller frequently has only the rather lumpen speechifying. Which leads one to wonder whether a documentary narrated by Mayall might have better served the mission (of course then we wouldn’t have encountered the galvanising force of Lily’s tragic demise. It might also have highlighted that, however accurate the film’s gist is – and it is, accurate – there’s not really that much in the way of bona-fide evidence that doesn’t involve inference and extrapolation).
Nevertheless, if the execution leaves a lot to be desired, One by One still makes for an interesting document in terms of best guesses at the agenda’s path to fruition, currently in full effect from the Gates-keeper himself, the proud product of a line of eugenicists. Presumably, Miller is basing her 500-million figure on the Georgia Guidestones (which is closer to seven percent of the population than five percent on 2014 figures, but who’s counting). There’s a concern here, though. Miller may be right to puncture the climate-change agenda (little Greta’s handlers would be irate, were they one of the ten people to have seen Miller’s movie), but she’s taking as gospel many of the same facts promoted by those she denounces as liars.
Are we really even sure the world’s population is seven-eight billion? Can we be certain ice ages occur as part of natural climate change (maybe Miller would have jumped aboard the mudflood wave if she’d made this a few years later)? Can we know the Guidestones and not deagel.com represent the true face of the depopulators? Or neither? And how far does this predictive programming go? Back to material suggesting “Greys” are a devolved, sterile future tense of humanity? Further, to Rudolf Steiner’s warnings of the same (which manage to avoid telling us how this will come to pass)?
At one point, Ernest offers his opinion “…I believe that this planet can support two billion humans perfectly comfortably”, adding that it’s a question of space: “Almost seven billion humans use too many resources. This leads to a very uncertain future for us all” and “Soon we will have depleted the resources so much, that life can’t be sustained, and then everything will die”. Which sounds a little like Miller buys into overpopulation as an issue, even as she denounces the Elite’s means of dealing with it. Which is peculiar. I’d suggest the last thing on the Elite/NWO order mind is a Thanos-like concern for preserving an imperilled planet, but delving into Satanic agendas appears to be beyond Miller’s remit. Besides which, Buckminster Fuller – who knew a thing or two – was of the view that the Earth could support ten times its current population; it isn’t a matter of insufficient resources, but of how those resources are allocated.
Elsewhere, Miller leaves the question open but is clearly leading the audience in the right direction when a character finds herself “wondering if global warming and climate change is just another way of making us live in fear”, before extending that to the Cold War and nuclear testing. Ernest brings the War on Terror into the conversation as he explains the fall of the Twin Towers (“Play building blocks with me”) feeding fear of terrorist attacks and so fuelling the acceptance of such police-state measures as chips in passports, ID cards and pervasive CCTV (“They’re using this orchestrated ruse to convince the public to accept Big Brother type controls”).
As to the method, she casts her net wide, since “There are a mass of ways they can introduced population slaughter”. These range from “being frog-marched away from our homes in a martial-law type of way” (on the grounds of climate change), to invoking internment camps (see Canada’s leaked plan for 2021), to “The armed forces are going to kill us. What they’re trained to do”, to using “fear to fuel racism”, and “We’ll do the job for them”. Then there are “Staged events, bioengineered diseases, vaccines” (in fairness to the diseases part, few outside of GNM were really questioning virus theory prior to March 2020).
Ernest doubles down: “It could come in vaccines. Not this generation. The next… Prevention and cure for cancer. Or having babies”. Which is one of the prevailing – and reasonable – assumptions behind the guise of an entirely humanitarian mass-vaccination programme. Of course, the other is that this programme carries a feast of other functions beyond the usual cocktail of nasty ingredients, that it’s designed to alter our DNA and switch on/off our immune system at will (Miller covers this with Ernest’s realisation that simple sterility wouldn’t be enough: “You’re right. They’d never wait two generations!”). Most astutely, Miller suggests “This global holocaust will probably come out from under the banner of the United Nations”.
One might argue Miller’s protracted discussions don’t take things far enough, that focussing on depopulation represents only the tip of the iceberg, that the explanations given aren’t nearly compelling enough unless you are already in the know, and by emphasising just that element, she is buying into the fear her characters are decrying. The Celestine Prophecy-style oneness rather goes out the window once the focus is on our mortal coils, or the shuffling off thereof. Nevertheless, Miller gets five out of five for good intentions. As far as inserting her content into a successful storytelling, though, One by One is a bust.
