A young Michelle Shocked runs barefoot through the snowy woods, wearing nothing but a grey hospital gown and a barcode on the back of her neck. She's being chased by lots of faceless people on black whatever-you-call-those-ski-motorcycle-things. What are those things called? Motorskis? Ski mobiles? Snow mobiles? At any rate, there's a whole bunch of them and they're all chasing after this little shaved-head kid who's running and running. The kid runs into a (insert your own secluded-woods-area word here), and up pop at least a dozen other little shaved heads, all looking suitably institutionalized and hospital-escapee-ish. They were all hiding behind fallen logs, you see, and all the helicopters and searchlights in the world can't penetrate the unsecure non-cover of their hidey-hole. Little Michelle takes her place behind a fallen log. After a moment, one more kid joins the group, and then I guess the group's complete 'cause suddenly a different kid jumps up and starts communicating with the fugitive band in what looks like a silly combination of semaphore and sign language. Mr. Child Actor takes it all very, very seriously, though, and I understand now that he is the Leader. The Leader tells them all to separate, a too-serious female voice-over tells us, and all the kids scatter. The voice-over is the voice of Little Michelle in the future, you understand. "It was Zach's idea to separate, so I guess he saved my life. I never got a chance to thank him." That's what she says. Then the camera cuts to a scene of Zach with some metal thing over his mouth, being dragged into some building by two snow-Nazis. A screen floater tells me we're in Gillette, Wyoming, 2009. Blah blah blah bad acting by soldier-types, the head bad guy orders a bad actor to kill the kids if they make it "past the wire." So of course the scene is of two little hospital patients scaling a wire fence, viewed through the green, grainy crosshairs of a night-vision scope, as if they are about to be shot. There's a long sequence in which a third hospital patient takes out the soldier who was going to shoot the two scaling the fence. He is set upon by many snow-Nazis and he fights admirably, but is, in the end, outnumbered. I think the purpose of this scene is not only to heighten suspense and drama, but also to alert us, the viewing audience, that these little ragamuffins are more than just pickpockets in London. They are fighting machines. And don't you forget it.
Okay, so anyway, the two make it over the fence, they run, and then Little Michelle falls through some thin ice into the cold water below. Little Michelle's friend stops to call her name (it's Max, by the way), but then realizes she's about to get capped and takes off again. Blah blah blah overhead shot of running child in searchlights, Humvees and snow-thingies zooming all over the place. Cut to conversation between head Bad Guy and random soldier. Soldier tells BG that they've captured seven, killed two, and wounded three. BG replies that they've all got big problems if just one "makes it to the outside." "Realistically, sir, it's ten degrees out here. How far can these kids get?" Oh-ho-ho, mister stupid soldier-man! You don't even know that you're dealing with super-genetically engineered super-beings. Dumb. What do they teach people in the Army these days? All the bad people zoom away on their evil, child-collecting snow-thingies, and the camera pans across the snowy ground to a window of ice in the snow, through which we see Max's face looking upward, wide awake and not drowned or hypothermia'd at all.
Cleverly, the shot of young Max's face is slowly replaced by a shot of grown-up Max's face, and the voice-over continues and the camera pans out to show us a pensive, leather-clad young lady sitting on the rim of the Space Needle in Seattle. No, seriously, it's the Space Needle. ["Kim would be so happy." -- Sars] It's all decrepit and graffiti'd, and the moon is impossibly orange and huge. 'Cause it's the grim and dirty future, you see, and the moon always looks like that when there's been an apocalyptic event of any kind. Anyway, Little Miss Voice-Over continues to alert us to the fact that "hope is for losers," and that she has no idea where any of the others are. She hopes they're okay, though. 'Cause she's a walking contradiction who doesn't really believe her own cynical propaganda. Get it?
Cut to Max's sweaty face in profile as she fumbles with a pill bottle. She's got the shakes, she's trying to take the pills, she'sshe's having a flashback! Flash to scenes of bald kids with stern little faces marching around some grey, loveless building. Slide-show style, we see kids marching, kids training in martial arts, kids looking at a screen that's showing words like "discipline" and "teamwork" -- kids being brainwashed into little soldiers, basically. There's also some shots of the kids' eyes working like camera lenses. This, my friends, is important to remember for later. After some moments of this flashing back, Max strolls out of the bathroom, fresh as a daisy, and smiles as her roommate comments on how it sucks that they both partied hard and late, but Max is fine, while roomie is hung smooth over. The roommate drinks some coffee, then comments that she's feeling almost human, to which Max bitterly replies, "Yeah, me, too." Oooooooh! You got that, too, right? 'Cause Max isn't entirely human.
'kay. stop is Max's neighbors' apartment. Tenants include: one male (sweating and wrapped in a blanket), one female (worried and hovering), and one child (cute and endearingly precocious). It seems the sweaty fellow is Max's co-worker, and he's too sick to go to work today. Max offers to pick up his check for him, then says goodbye faux-cheerfully as he lies down to be weak some more on the couch. Onward, then. Our tour of Max's life continues through the city streets of Seattle via bicycle. Max is a bike messenger. Trs tough, no?
Max rides through the bustling city streets, while her voice-over tells us that the nation is in a depression due to an electromagnetic pulse that ruined the US's prosperity. Terrorists. That's who did it. Freaking terrorists. The electromagnetic pulse wiped out all computer records, so everyone had to start over from scratch. Hence, the depression. But Max doesn't think it should be called a depression, 'cause people don't seem to be all that depressed. Um. Thanks, genius. Maybe you should stick to soldiering and leave the thinking to someone else. As she's thinking about how cheerful and jolly everyone is, the camera cuts to several shots of people being roughed up by cops and MPs, plus some extra shots of beefy men standing solidly in front of shiny black cars as if they were perhaps members of a Mafia organization.