There’s nothing conventional about “The Last Place on Earth” — or so director James Slocum would have you believe.

The film follows the spur-of-the-moment romance between Rob Baskin (Dana Ashbrook), a soul-searching man-child with a flare for guitar, and Ann Field (Tisha Campbell), a loudmouthed leukemia victim who loves to cook. The two meet by chance — more specifically, while arguing over taco prices — and love-struck Rob is forced to balance emotion with reality: He knows Ann will soon lose her battle with leukemia but, alas, the heart has spoken.

It’s a pseudo-interesting premise — albeit one exploited by the Lifetime network — but Slocum’s genius lies more in the movie’s politics than in its tear-jerking storyline. The director deliberately de-emphasizes the main characters’ ethnicity, making no reference to the fact that Rob is white and Ann isn’t. It’s an unexpected choice, especially amid mainstream movies that love to play the race card — take for example the recent Ashton Kutcher flick, “Guess Who” for example — but Slocum’s break from traditional Hollywood is unbelievably refreshing.

And so are the film’s aesthetics. Shot in the stunning Sierra Nevada Mountains, “The Last Place on Earth” features some spectacular nature sequences, interspersed with a double-exposure camera technique Slocum terms “low-tech special effects.” It’s guerrilla filmmaking at its finest: Rather than allowing himself to be hindered by a financial deficit, Slocum embraces his less-than-mainstream budget, crafting some very intriguing cinematic techniques.

“If you just jump into (a movie), you bring a really fresh perspective,” Slocum says of his first feature film. “Sometimes that can be incredibly energizing.”

It’s a bold move for