“A great vision and premise can only get you so far, but Sunshine Girls believes in itself with absolute confidence.”
We are onto day three of the 2026 GenreBlast Film Festival! Sunshine Girls is the first feature film to play today, and if you’re into science fiction or dystopic nearby-future storylines that make you think a little bit, this one’s for you... and it’s a bit of a trippy one.
Imagine a future where oxygen doesn’t exist anymore. For the last 25 years, for whatever mysterious reason, plants have just stopped the photosynthesis step. Because of that, humankind has been forced to get a little creative to invent a synthetic version of oxygen, and the way they do it is through women, of course. Women voluntarily give up the option to have any future children and go through a medical procedure where they are... fertilized by the sun or something, and then later give birth, literally, to oxygen.
It makes zero sense. I’m going to say that right off the bat; it makes absolute zero sense, even if you’re high on all the drugs simultaneously. But believe me when I say... it believes in itself. It has a ton of confidence, and I feel like the fictional science behind the script makes a lot more sense to the writer and director of the film, Madeleine Hicks, than it does to me or anyone else.
Like I said, as well, it does make you think. It has some very clear, on-the-nose references to dissatisfaction, especially on how some people try their whole lives to have children and can’t, while there are others that can easily do so and choose not to... and how that’s just not a fair trade-off.
I personally feel as though there should have been more power plays here, though. You’re talking about a potential end-of-the-world event where we know we can save the planet with the help of women, and yet pretty much everything the women do in the film is voluntary. I would have expected a lot more strings being pulled by men in the film... you know, men deciding what women should do with their bodies. That would have been extremely relevant, but there’s also barely any men in the movie at all. There are a few things in the film that remind me of titles like The Island with Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson, but just not enough. Instead, the film attempts to play its hand with a romantic subplot between two of the girls at the clinic... and it’s a fine romance. I don’t hate it. The lead girls have decent onscreen chemistry, but I still felt as though there was a lot of untapped potential for the dystopic worldbuilding and the political elements of the story... and it just didn’t go there.
Obviously, Sunshine Girls is a microbudget film, so a lot of the potential and originality is sort of muddled down by the constraints of the budget. But for what it is, it does still make you stop and think. In general, I like the core idea of giving birth to air, despite how preposterous the entire thing is on paper. Because a lot of the film centers around certain quick flashes of memories, I did think the editing flowed together really nicely.
So, for me, the main strength about the movie comes down to an original premise, decent editing, and ultimately the potential of what it could be. However, a lot of everything else kind of gets buried beneath the lack of budget. Modern moviegoers watching the film will likely feel an urge to turn it off for having the “amateur” feel that a lot of low-budget films get. It doesn’t always have the pristine aesthetic that a lot of top-of-the-line equipment offers with lighting and color grading, and at times it has technical issues, but not because it didn’t try. You can easily tell a lot of visual sequences were made with a genuine artistic vision behind the lens, but once again, the constraints in the overall budget limit that vision from coming through. Just because I could see what they were going for doesn’t automatically mean it was completely successful.
Unfortunately, a great vision and premise can only get you so far. I certainly enjoyed it for what it was, and I can see other people watching it and feeling the exact same way, so I’d never judge you if you personally love it.
Unbiased/Technical Score: 30/50 (60%)
Biased/Entertainment Score: 31/50 (62%)
Total Combined Score: 61/100 (61%) | Letterboxd: 3/5 stars