New Casey Affleck movie trailer envisages a world without women

Star could hit a rocky road after accusations of sexual harassment

Casey Affleck's 'Light of My Life' is set to be released in August this year. Rex Features

The "indie" Affleck brother, Casey, has dropped the trailer for his latest self-penned, directed and starring work, Light of my Life, and while the performances and premise look solid enough, the movie looks certain to raise a few eyebrows too.

Light of my Life takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where a mystery pandemic has wiped out half of the world's population. Of course, we've been here before with everything from viruses (Contagion) to zombies (28 Days Later) to aliens (A Quiet Place) to  dragons (Reign of Fire), but Affleck's pandemic is a little more specific – it has meticulously wiped the entire female population of the planet.

That's a controversial proposition in the post-#MeToo era, and all the more so given that Affleck was required to settle two separate lawsuits accusing him of sexual harassment while shooting his directorial debut, the mockumentary I'm Still Here.

To give Affleck his credit, the female Armageddon doesn’t mean his latest movie is entirely bereft of strong female roles. Affleck’s character has a secret, and this isn’t a spoiler since it’s made quite clear in the trailer: His young son, with whom he is traversing the barren post-apocalyptic wastelands, is in fact his daughter, presumed to be the last surviving female on the planet, complete with cropped hair and nondescript clothing to pass her off as a young boy.

Affleck’s protective fatherly instincts are, naturally in overdrive in a world full of men who haven’t seen a female since the disaster occurred.

The Manchester By the Sea star has certainly taken a provocative turn with the plot of his latest offering, but it's certainly an interesting prospect, and the performances look solid even if, from the trailer, the film looks like it could be a little slow and ponderous in terms of its pacing.

The 11 critics who have been lucky enough to see it and review it since it debuted at the Berlin Festival in February have helped it to an 82 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, though it's fair to say that those who didn't like the movie really didn't like the movie. SciFi Now's Katie Goh was cutting with her assessment: "Pitched as a story about a girl, Light of My Life is only concerned with one man's saviour complex," she said. "A patriarch's journey to safeguard his daughter's virtue. Everything else is background noise."

The rest of us will have to wait until August 9 to make up our minds, when the film will launch in US cinemas and, as yet tbc, digital platforms worldwide.