A highway through Canadian hell

Saskatchewan director Lowell Dean’s last two movies, WolfCop and Another WolfCop, featured a cop who was also a wolf. SuperGrid isn’t exactly about a grid that is super — the “grid” in question is basically a two-lane prairie highway — but it is another fine genre picture, this one set in a rundown post-apocalyptic world. You could call it Mad Sask.

Marshall Williams stars as Deke Campbell, a road courier

whose last trip ended poorly when his co-driver/sister died. Keeping things in the family, he enlists his brother Jesse (Leo Fafard, the cop-wolf from WolfCop) for one last run to square his debts to kingpin/dandy Lazlo (Jonathan Cherry).

It’s a simple setup, but SuperGrid throws in enough unique elements to make this more than just a clone of more expensive movies.

Particularly creative is the idea that, in a world where civilization is falling apart, an Indigenous reserve has become an island of enlightenment. Tinsel Korey plays Eagle, one of several strong female characters, trying to stem a kind of zombie-lite disease also ravaging this world.

Dean makes the most of his limited budget — the brothers’ ride is a rusted-out truck but it has a “thorium cell” under the hood, not to mention a machine gun that looks to have been lifted from a B-17. And in this future, there’s a border wall between North Dakota and Saskatchewan, mostly to protect people from the cannibalism on our side.

Throw in a few vaguely futuristic terms — Jacks, Overwatch — and a cameo by pro wrestler Jay Reso, and you’ve got a distinctly Canadian take on the genre. Because apocalypse starts with an “Eh.”