Mutant World (French release: Independence Wars)[3][4] is a 2014 Canadian-American neo-sci-fi western[5] horror television film directed by David Winning and written by Matt Campagna, produced by Nomadic Pictures on behalf of SyFy.

[6] The film follows the adventures of a group of doomsday preppers who emerge from an elaborate bunker a decade after a meteor wipes out civilization, finding the world overrun by mutants.

After a brief power struggle underground, a team consisting of new leader Melissa, Geoff, Rogan, Shaina, and Tyler ventures out, shadowed by a woman in black.

The team encounters a man who leads them to sanctuary in the form of survivors living in a town resembling something out of the Old West where they meet Sheriff Elmore Leonard.

"[7] Mutant World was the third television movie for SyFy written by Toronto-based screenwriter Matt Campagna, all of which have followed a certain formula, as Eric Volmers points out: "take a supernatural, action-packed premise, add an established character actor ... and shoot it all cheaply and efficiently".

The "star power" of Mutant World comes from Sons of Anarchy actor Kim Coates, whose role in the film is "small but meaty", requiring only three days for his scenes.

[9] He was asked to star in the film by its Calgary producers, Chad Oakes and Mike Frislev, who had a past relationship with the actor after casting him in 2008's coming-of-age drama 45 R.P.M., but he insisted on changes to the script to give his character "a more poignant arc."

"[7] Jason Cermak is a Drayton Valley native who won an Alberta Film and Television Award the previous year for his role in the family drama Common Chord.

"[9] Mutant World was also the feature film début for 17-year-old Irricana native Megan Tracz (Xeni), who was introduced to acting at the age of ten when she joined the Airdrie Family Theatre.

[10] Mutant World was shot over fifteen days[9] in Calgary (the old Telus Science Centre served as the bunker's interiors), Strathmore, and the CL Ranch near Springbank.

When I read the script and (heard) it was going to be done in 15 days, I lost my s — t."[9] Matt Campagna described it as "a pretty wild time," and was happy to have been given "the gift of gorgeous snowfalls ... You can't even pay for that kind of production value!

"[10] The ability to adapt quickly and "go with the flow" is a key requirement for low-budget horror films, a world that the Campagna knew very well,[9] as he wrote in his blog: "Between doing some on-the-fly re-writes, running a camera, animating graphics, and supervising visual effects, I've actually had some time to do a bit of directing".

Eric Volmers described Mutant World as "funny, entertaining and action-packed," occasionally recalling John Carpenter's films, like Big Trouble in Little China and Escape from New York.

"The tale of gun-toting survivors on an excursion through a barren post-apocalyptic world (or, as we Albertans call it, home) is probably most interesting as a contemporary example of a sub-genre that had an almost exclusive synergy with the 80s ... high-camp sci-fi Westerns that followed Star Wars and Road Warrior ...[5]Shalom goes on to list a few of those "singular works": Radioactive Dreams, Buckaroo Banzai, and Hell Comes to Frogtown, further noting that, unlike the Eighties films, Mutant World is "delightfully female-centric, despite the largely male creative team", while at the same time, gender is not central to the film:In fact, the film simultaneously upholds and subverts the Reagan-era Hollywood theme of father-son continuity.

"[6] Jim McLellan feels the film's potential is not at all realized, "because there is hardly any aspect that is not badly botched, right from the start:" Coates, the only real "name" in the cast, is "barely in the film," in a bait-and-switch; the script is "just terrible" as a quick mission "spirals off into a jolly road-trip, with no apparent regard for the people back in the bunker", and: "there's no explanation provided" to explain why "some people are totally mutated, some are only mutated at night(!

[17] McLellan goes on to criticize Ashanti's acting, the "poorly-choreographed fight" establishing Melissa as the leader, and how "no-one appears to have aged or been changed in the slightest by the passage of a decade".