Kodi Smit-McPhee plays young Ethan, who lives in the last extant city on an Earth that's busy living up to enviro-activists' most pessimistic predictions: The last tree was logged years ago, natural disasters destroyed nearly everything, and all the oxygen ran out. Today, a company called Chronicorp makes synthetic oxygen, but most people can't afford enough of it, and some, like Ethan's wife Xanthe, have "The Sickness," which seems to make their bodies slowly reject the manufactured air.

Out of nowhere, Ethan is summoned to the offices of Chronicorp, where company exec Regina Jackson announces, "you could save all of us." She shows him the time machine – it turns out, Ethan's dad built it, before killing himself long ago. It's only partly functional, though, and if Ethan ventures 407 years into the future there's no guarantee he'll be able to return. Cue a very rote reluctant-hero scene, in which Ethan has to be talked into the mission by his lifelong buddy Jude.

When he finally says yes, Ethan is outfitted with a nifty space suit and an AI gizmo named Archie. But immediately after landing in 2474, where he sees a world transformed into a verdant jungle with no humans to be found, he nearly gets himself killed. Inexplicably, Jackson's rescue effort sends not a scientist or soldier to save Ethan, but Jude.

That choice turns out not to be so inexplicable, but like some other confusing events – like the skeleton Ethan finds that appears to be his own murdered remains – the movie rolls with it in an unsatisfying way, neither giving us a satisfying temporary explanation nor allowing the characters to be as puzzled as they should be. Instead, the two men just start their mission, which soon involves trying to fix a nuclear power device before the time machine's window of functionality closes forever.

Occasional flashbacks observe Ethan's father's strange behaviour and the trauma he caused, all rendered with intense overacting and broad-strokes dialogue.

Though the melodrama contains information we'll need later, its emotions are prefabricated and unconvincing. That's all the more frustrating when, after its secrets are revealed, 2067 proves to have had the makings of a decent sci-fi adventure.

– Compilation