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Post-Apocalypse Movies

Would like to hear from anyone who has seen the Australian film The Rover (David Michôd 2014).'
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Amazon blurb:
10 years after a global economic collapse, a hardened loner pursues the men who stole his only possession, his car. Along the way, he captures one of the thieves' brother, and the duo form an uneasy bond during the dangerous journey.

It was panned for poor plot scripting on release but I anticipate something of a cult status to come. I viewed it in the very small cinema it had been alloted with about 12 other people, and when I laughed right out loud at the final scene, they all turned and stared at me aghast. It wasn't a mockery, I found the blackest humour of that scene genuinely funny.

I've watched it about 5 times. Still enjoy it. One of the better PA films around. I'm very biased towards its cinematography as it was filmed where I go camping 3 times a year. That landscape does have a very haunted atmosphere.

Once you know the punchline of that final scene, the rest of the film takes on an even darker sensibility the next time you watch it. There isn't anything left for the main character to care about.

This is a genuinely distopian story. 5/5



Here's a reviewer who gave it what it deserved.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/...ximum-madness-in-the-aussie-outback-1.1896846
Most others completely missed the point, but that's hack reviewers eh. Rates 66% on RT.

I really enjoyed it. Powerful, more realistic Mad Max scenario. Maybe because of that realism it's "excesses" were more hard to stomach.
 
You're right. It is a believable scenario. And that's an interesting comparison to make.

One thing that I found appealing on repeated viewing was its use of dilapidated infrastructure and bureaucracy. Many PA plots have it completely gone or replaced by alternatives. In this case, there has been no recycling, just decay. The army still functions and has a HQ in Sydney, but its function is unclear tending towards a warped form of policing and rogue vigilantism. Money is still used in trade, but American currency is preferred. The trains run, so supply continues from somewhere, but there are private carriages guarded by heavily armed mercenaries, many of them with Chinese writing indicative perhaps of the foreign ownership of Australia at that time (ominous foreshadowing and definitely an allegory for Australia's current process of selling out its very soul to that rapacious state, IMO).

The opening title sequence refers to "The Collapse", which has been interpreted as an economic collapse. Guy Pearce's character highlights the moral collapse and the disappearance of values like the value of human life and the rule of law to protect it. He talks about it at length while in army custody. That is where it got me in the guts. It was frightening how seemingly normal things looked on the outside, kind of masking the corruption inside. Where MM2 exposed a stark division between those who held the values of civilised community against the wasteland warriors who celebrated the absence of any form of old world restraint, Michôd's smaller pools of rural humanity are far more ambiguous in terms of their values and intentions.

It isn't as sexy as the Max universe, but for me the realism better serves the intensity of the human interactions and this engenders a more visceral response beyond the pure aesthetic effect of the MM films.
 
I love this genre of film! An obscure recommend is American 3000!

 
I really enjoyed it. Powerful, more realistic Mad Max scenario. Maybe because of that realism it's "excesses" were more hard to stomach.

It was OK, but Robert Pattinson was borderline unintelligible in his attempts to distance himself from his blockbuster past. Nice punchline at the end, but mistook being doleful for profundity - we'd all be miserable if there was an apocalypse in real life, no shit! Guy Pearce is a good man, though.
 
Road Wars on Syfy at 9 pm tonight. My review of it:

Road Wars:A Mad Max/Zombiesque hybrid. A Rabies type Virus has devastated the Earth, the cities have fallen. Small bands of survivors eke out an existence in the badlands, But the Road Gangs are also in operation, vehicles and outfits just as outlandish as in any MM film.

An amnesiac Road Warrior (even dressed like MM) emerges from the desert, he brings hope as he may be immune to the virus. The infected, are day-walkers and night-runners, but mostly come out at night, seeking blood. they'll tear out your throat to get it. The film owes a death to I Am Legend as well as MM, though the infected are blood drinkers they are more akin to Zomboid Vampires of IAL.

Makes good use of a low budget. 6/10

http://bmovieshelf.blogspot.ie/2015/05/early-review-road-wars-2015.html

Another PA film on Syfy at 11pm: Bounty Killer. Haven't seen it yet.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2369396/
 
Would like to hear from anyone who has seen the Australian film The Rover (David Michôd 2014).
are there 2 post apocalyptic cinema threads out there somewhere, i recall posting about it comes at night recently ?

the rover was my movie of the year that year, have rewatched once or twice and still been emotionally engaged throughout and destroyed by the ending ... not so much a punchline for me as just a hard punch in the guts ... and beautifully woven throughout the narrative ... obviously echoes the earlier george miller films, intentionally, but a subtler and more believable scenario ... guy pearce is so goddam taciturn ... i suspect its something of a mans movie, not one for a prospective date night perhaps ... loved it, might watch it tonight in fact ...
 
are there 2 post apocalyptic cinema threads out there somewhere, i recall posting about it comes at night recently ?

the rover was my movie of the year that year, have rewatched once or twice and still been emotionally engaged throughout and destroyed by the ending ... not so much a punchline for me as just a hard punch in the guts ... and beautifully woven throughout the narrative ... obviously echoes the earlier george miller films, intentionally, but a subtler and more believable scenario ... guy pearce is so goddam taciturn ... i suspect its something of a mans movie, not one for a prospective date night perhaps ... loved it, might watch it tonight in fact ...

You posted it in Zombie & Post Apocalyptic Fiction which deals with the written word although a few other PA films have been referenced there.
 
it comes at night, very effective and creepy, joel edgerton just gets better and better, what a solid and unobvious acting talent ... one of those movies where lots of threads are left dangling and all the better for it ... if you liked the road, its a bit like the road, but without ... the road
 
There is also the 1959 Stanley Kramer film On the Beach. While OTB is a very good movie, I seriously question the central premise, the extermination of all animal life due to an atomic holocaust.

Never seen the film, but the Nevil Shute novel made a huge impact on (a very young) me when I first read it. The premise (which might differ from the film's) is that a huge cloud of fallout is drifting down from a nuclear war in the northern hemisphere, and the characters are just waiting for the first symptoms of radiation sickness.

Going back to a much earlier post, I think my reaction to reading it answers the question of why PA stories are so popular - in the case of OtB, the characters' situations and actions were totally grounded in a reality that I easily understood. Futuristic sci-fi settings with ftl travel or genetic mods can be very immersive if they're well-written, but fantasizing can only take you so far - the leap of imagination required for most PA tales is so short that the emotional context hits you way harder. The characters in OtB had seen the rest of the world die, including friends and family, and were applying the certain knowledge of their own approaching death to everyday situations. At the time, I saw myself racing a car flat-out round the track with reckless abandon, and totally understood the mindset that would lead me there. Now, on reflection, I'd probably identify more with the old guys at the club, working their way through the priceless collection of drinks in the cellar :cooll:
 
The Girl With All The Gifts

Zombie film with a slight twist. British made & cast apart from Glenn Close. The post apocalypse decaying London is really well realised, cgi serves the story & isn't too obtrusive. This is what computer gaming will look like in a few years I think . Recommended if you like this sort of genre.
 
The Girl With All The Gifts

Zombie film with a slight twist. British made & cast apart from Glenn Close. The post apocalypse decaying London is really well realised, cgi serves the story & isn't too obtrusive. This is what computer gaming will look like in a few years I think . Recommended if you like this sort of genre.
Bought that a while back, but haven't yet watched it.
 
Yes, it looks great & for about the first half hour it's not spelt out what the nature of the weirdness is. Glen Close I thought was a man for quite a while..
 
Yes, it looks great & for about the first half hour it's not spelt out what the nature of the weirdness is. Glen Close I thought was a man for quite a while..

A completely ruthless scientist. A Mengle? But she convinced herself her actions were necessary to save what was left of humanity.
 
New post apocalyptic flick - Future World:

In a post-apocalyptic world, where water and gasoline have long since dried-up, a prince from the oasis (one of the last known safe-havens) must venture out to find medicine for the ailing queen (Lucy Liu), but along the way he gets mixed up with the warlord (James Franco) and his robot Ash (Suki Waterhouse), which leads to a daring journey through the desolate wastelands. FUTURE WORLD is in theaters, on demand & on iTunes May 25th, 2018.
 
The Survivalist: A truly bleak post-apocalypse film. Ireland after The Fall, global population has slumped as resources run out and civilisation has collapsed. The Survivalist (Martin McCann) lives alone in a small cabin in the woods living on subsistence farming, we see him burying a body and resetting a bear-trap, he does not welcome company. Kathryn (Olwen Fouré) and her teen "daughter" Milja (Mia Goth) arrive on his doorstep, at first he turns them away but the prospect of sex with Milja changes his mind and he feeds them, letting them stay for the night. The next day Milja convinces him to allow them to remain with him. Milja grows to like McCann but Kathryn has plans to take over the small farm, her sabotage (stealing The Survivalist's shotgun rounds) results in problems when Milja is snatched by a drifter.

Mostly filmed in the woods and the small cabin, there is claustrophobic feel to the film, one of the few occasions when we see wider vista is in fields where Milja is held captive so even there is no escape from confinement. Fouré convinces as the mother who will do what she has to in order to ensure her survival and that of her "daughter". She has been hardened by the years since The Fall and is unable to grasp the chance of a life which involves more than the two of them. Mia becomes torn between Fouré and McCann, she will have to make a decision. McCann has memories of how he lost his brother in a clash with other survivors, a story which is gradually pieced together. The paucity of animal life suggests that they also suffered a dieback. Only once is a rabbit caught in a tap and a bird's nest is a rare thing indeed. Raiders are also a constant fear and there is the implication that some of them are cannibals.

Filmed entirely in rural settings in Northern Ireland, The Survivalists is directed and written by Stephen Fingleton and provides a worthy addition to the Irish Post-Apocalyptic Canon. 8/10.
 
There is the 1951 film When Worlds Collide. It gets a mention, even though I didn't care for it all that much as it deviated too far from the book.
 
Does The Handmaid's Tale count?

The book is certainly set among an apocalypse, and comes on the heels of another.

I really enjoyed the book as an example of dystopian fiction, the 1st series did a great job of retelling the story. I found the 2nd series a bit slow but they did flesh out some aspects of the world. High hopes for S3.
 
1955's Day The World Ended shows a very different kind of apocalypse
After a nuclear war, an unlikely group of people, including a rancher, a geologist, a crook and his girlfriend, find themselves trapped in the middle of nowhere while battling an ugly mutant created by Paul Blaisdell. The geologist and the crook also find the time to fight over the rancher's daughter, while the moll fumes.

 
There is the 1951 film When Worlds Collide. It gets a mention, even though I didn't care for it all that much as it deviated too far from the book.

WWC looks a bit off now as all the Earthlings rescued are white Americans!
 
WWC looks a bit off now as all the Earthlings rescued are white Americans!
The book was pretty much like that as well, except that Kyto, a 'Jap' (that was how the books referred to him) servant of the main character also is among the survivors.

The sequel (book) was a bit more diverse, except the non-whites surviving the cataclysm were mostly villains. Hollywood would be certain to more PC these days.
 
I have that film in my DVD collection. It's actually not bad.
I liked it too - an imaginative take on radiation mutations... unfortunately I imagine most people today would only see it as MST3000 fodder
 
what is our fascination with the apocalyptic survival narrative, beyond the cars ?
 
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