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Post-Apocalypse Movies

Bird Box: A different sort of Apocalypse, mass suicides are taking place, it gradually emerges that this is due to some entities which cause people to envision their worst fears. Some are just driven crazy and attack others at random but others embrace the change and see it as the new reality, forcing others to take off blindfolds.

In the early stages, survivors including Sandra Bullock and John Malkovich take shelter in a house, only venturing out when supplies run short. They discover that viewing the entities even through CCTV footage results in suicide. The survivors are divided about admitting newcomers as they suspect that the change has resulted in new normative behaviours in humans who survived exposure to the entities. Birds give an early warning of the entities approach.Later Bullock s shown travelling down a river with two children as she seeks a supposed sanctuary.

A pretty savage aftermath to the fall of civilisation is portrayed in Bird Box, the suicides begin in Europe before they spread to America and presumably the rest of the world. There are three fears, seeing the entities and being changed, being attacked by the psychotic changees, being forced to change by those who now worship the entities.

Susanne Bier has turned Eric Heisserer’s script into an intriguing new addition to the Post-Apocalypse genre. 8/10. On Netflix.
I felt it was too long and lost its way in the middle. The disease or creatures are never really explored. Also hokey ending. 6 out of 10.
 
It seems that Bird Box is a bit of a Marmite film: Some enjoy it; others, not so much.

I concur fairly closely with Ramon’s 8/10, though I’d probably drop it to a 7 because of the lack of exposure to the entities. It’s one of the few scary films l’ve seen where l would have liked to have seen a bit more of the “man in the rubber suit” (as my mum described the Alien in the eponymous flick).

What l thought were nice imaginative touches:

The use of birds as early warning systems, the exploitation of the car’s proximity sensors and the strange antigravity leaf behaviour when the entities approached.

maximus otter
 
Apparently the aliens were edited out of Bird Box because they looked too ridiculous. Seeing as how the whole thing was bloody ridiculous, leave 'em in, I'd have said. I dunno, Cell got slammed a couple of years ago and it does everything this does without being tedious. No justice, I tell you.
 
And now: the Bird Box challenge.

Last week Netflix claimed that 45 million of its subscribers had streamed the Sandra Bullock thriller Bird Box in its first week of release: a record for original movie content on the platform.

Five days later, on 2 January, they issued a public health warning in the interests of keeping as many of those subscribers alive as possible. The service was responding to a growing social media fad for the Bird Box challenge, in which people emulate characters in the film who must perform every task blindfolded, lest lurking monsters drive them to suicide.

“Can’t believe I have to say this, but: PLEASE DO NOT HURT YOURSELVES WITH THIS BIRD BOX CHALLENGE,” Netflix tweeted from its primary account. “We don’t know how this started, and we appreciate the love, but Boy and Girl” – a reference to the two unnamed children of Bullock’s character – “have just one wish for 2019 and it is that you not end up in the hospital due to memes.”

Netflix’s call for moderation (but not abstention) from the craze comes after thousands of videos posted online show people stumbling around houses, stairs and woods with scarves wrapped round their eyes.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/20...d-box-challenge-meme-sandra-bullock-blindfold
 
If Sandra Bullock jumped off a cliff would they do that too?!
 
We watched Bird Box tonight. There were so many gaping plots holes and annoying actions/situations that I gave up being exasperated and just watched the movie. I quite enjoyed it after that.
 
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Netflix’s call for moderation (but not abstention) from the craze comes after thousands of videos posted online show people stumbling around houses, stairs and woods with scarves wrapped round their eyes.

LOL. It's a Darwinian evolution test, isn't it.
 
IO (2019) Netflix Original

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Io_(film)

A woman, ( Margaret Qualley), seemingly alone works to keep Earth's bees from the brink of extinction on a planet literally choking to death. Her only contact with anyone is with an engineer who lives on IO, a moon orbiting Jupiter, The engineer lives with the rest of humanity who have fled Earth and works towards locating an earth-like planet in a nearby system.

Suddenly a man appears piloting an air balloon, (Anthony Mackie), looking for the women's father. The film then explores whether the couple should leave Earth or not.

Not enough for the two actors to work on, (they are practically the only two in the film), I'm not saying they are bad but they don't have enough, material. The whole thing feels like a pitch rather than a fully formed film. Nicely shot, it's been compared to The Martain but has more in common in a way with The Martian Chronicles. miniseries (1980).

Another mishit from Netflix - They really need people to look at projects before they greenlight them. Get some decent producers and writers too!

5 out of 10.

Watch Silent Running instead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Running
 
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IO (2019) Netflix Original

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Io_(film)

A woman, ( Margaret Qualley), seemingly alone works to keep Earth's bees from the brink of extinction on a planet literally choking to death. Her only contact with anyone is with an engineer who lives on IO, a moon orbiting Jupiter, Tthe engineer lives with the rest of humanity who have fled Earth and works towards locating an earth-like planet in a nearby system.

Suddenly a man appears piloting an air balloon, (Anthony Mackie), looking for the women's father. The film then explores whether the couple should leave Earth or not.

Not enough for the two actors to work on, (they are practically the only two in the film), I'm not saying they are bad but they don't have enough, material. The whole thing feels like a pitch rather than a fully formed film. Nicely shot, it's been compared to The Martain but has more in common in a way with The Martian Chronicles. miniseries (1980).

Another mishit from Netflix - They really need people to look at projects before they greenlight them. Get some decent producers and writers too!

5 out of 10.

Watch Silent Running instead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Running

I would agree with your assessment, IO was rather meh.
 
BirdBox was an excellent, excellent book. IMO. Haven't managed to see the film yet, mind.

And I saw Radius the other day. Low-budget Canadian film, which was very good indeed. Had a plot twist that really made me think.
 
Genesis (2018): Bad acting, bad script, bad effects, bad direction. Gave up on it after 15 minutes.

In a post-apocalyptic society, living underground as protection from pollution, the main concern is getting enough food and finding other survivors. A pollution-resistant android with A.I. is developed to help obtain this.

Quotes
Paul Brooks: [narrating] Paul Brooks journal day 518. It was once said that those suffering from the incapacity to love are living in hell. I often wonder if Dostoevsky wanted to say more, because what I know of hell isn't simply a place where love doesn't exist. Nor is it a place you go when you die. Hell is here, in this facility. In the body and in the mind.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4469518/

A Zombie Dostoevsky should rise from his grave and eat the "brains" of anyone associated with this film.

On Netflix.
 
If Sandra Bullock jumped off a cliff would they do that too?!

Well she is a bullock, and as every native american knows, you can stampede a herd off a cliff. (Now THAT needs an emoji!)

To other matters, I just re-watched Pontypool on Tuesday night. It is still my favorite zombie movie of all time I think.
 
I Think We're Alone Now: Del (Richard Dinklage) is alone now. It's Post-Apocalypse and there are plenty of dead bodies to clear out of houses. Del applies himself to this task, it becomes part of his daily routine along with classifying books at the library where he used to work and now lives. Del has always felt apart from others emotionally, even his own family,he now enjoys walking down the deserted main street of his small town. Del's idyll is disrupted by the arrival of Grace (Elle Fanning),, he tends to her after her car crashes but she won't leave and eventually they establish a fragile modus vivendi.

Grace is quirky, she carried a gun in case the dead might reanimate. She joins with Del in the clearing of the houses, he says: for every piece of rubbish cleared there is less chaos. She asks him if anyone ever told him he was weird and he responds: yeah but they're all dead now. Del is in his thirties, quiet and methodical while the teenage Grace dances and plays music, naturally their temperaments clash. But Xs dance across a map as each house in the town is emptied and the bodies buried.

The nature of The Apocalypse is never revealed, people just dropped dead, at home, at work, in their cars and presumably in planes. Cars block highways, filled with rotting corpses but somehow the ever empty streets of a small town appear even more eerie, a white X painted outside of each cleared house. The disorientation of survivors after a doomsday event is illustrated in the differing reactions of Del who retreats inward and sticks to routines and Grace who loves life and wants to find new interests in the seemingly empty world. There are plot turns which cannot be revealed without spoiling the viewing experience. The loose ends are all tied up by films end but perhaps I Think We're Alone Now doesn't deliver as much as it originally seemed to promise. Great performances though by Dinklage and Fanning.

Director and cinematographer Reed Morano working from a script by Mike Makowsky delivers an intriguing Addition to the Post-Apocalypse Film Genre. 7/10. On Netflix.
 
TV rather than film but sounds interesting even if Colavito gas a lot of quibbles about it.

All of this is a long way around asking exactly whom they felt that the new post-apocalyptic teenage zombie dramedy Daybreak was meant for. If you trust the algorithms—and I don’t—it’s apparently made for me, or, rather what they think of me.

The lead is a likeable young man, and the show features loads of 1980s and 1990s pop culture references. (Seriously: What teenager today is into 1983 He-Man? I’m 38 and it was only just barely my time.) There is a quasi-tragic same-sex romance, and it highlights the importance of found family. It’s like they were checking the boxes generated by a computer algorithm. If you actually watch the show, it feels like it was made by and for 40-something screenwriters who gained their knowledge of the world from television and have created a recursive self-referencing show about television that lacks real engagement with the world outside of Hollywood. And yet, it’s also a lot of fun and could have been great if not for the screenwriters’ complete miscalculation about how invested TV viewers are in the nuts and bolts of making television in a P.C. climate.

Daybreak begins as the story of Josh (an effortlessly charming Colin Ford from, of all things, Under the Dome), a Canadian expatriate who recently transferred to a Glendale, Calif. high school just in time to fall in love with a British expatriate with the supernaturally ridiculous name of Sam Dean before the world ends. (Ford also appeared on Supernatural, so, ha ha.) Biologically targeted bombs wipe out nearly all of the adult population, turning everyone over the age of eighteen into ravenous “ghoulies” who endlessly repeat the last banal thought that passed through their heads. (“There’s a sale on yoga pants at Lululemon!”) The effect efficiently removes any sense of dread and moves the story away from Fear the Walking Dead to something closer to comedy. Most of the remaining people in Glendale are high school students who have retreated to their Hollywood-approved cliques and claimed parts of the city in the name of jocks, nerds, fashionistas, etc. and war with one another for territory and supplies.


http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/r...tflix-apocalypse-comedy-thats-really-about-tv
 
The Collapsed: It's the end of the world as we know it - yet again. Civilisation has fallen, violence, killings for no apparent reason. Buildings burning, bodies in the street, some have apparently committed suicide. A family flees a city, heading into the countryside but encounter more violence. They hear strange noises, like mutterings. This film might well have had some influence on Bird Box but it doesn't have the same attraction. It wends it's way towards a great reveal in an episodic manner, wooden acting and lack lustre direction Written and directed by Justin McConnell. Some interesting ideas and scenes, so it maybe deserves 5/10. On Netflix.
 
Hostile (2017): A bleak Mad Max style desert, a lone woman is driving through this desolate territory. She stops at a store, forages some supplies, hears something moving. Radio's her position and heads back to base but has an accident. She comes to, trapped in her vehicle with a compound fracture in her leg. She is resilient but as night approaches she must face the horrors outside alone. Little of the nature of the apocalypse is explained but she has to fight a truly terrifying mutant and cannibals also pay her a visit. Some good jump scares and the creature is convincing. The terror is offset by flashbacks to her pre-apocalypse life, even that wasn't easy. She was an addict, found love but also encountered further heartbreaks. An intriguing horror drama written and directed by Mathieu Turi. 7/10. Showing again on the Horror Channel, Thursday 9th January at 11.10 pm.
 
Hostile (2017): A bleak Mad Max style desert, a lone woman is driving through this desolate territory. She stops at a store, forages some supplies, hears something moving. Radio's her position and heads back to base but has an accident. She comes to, trapped in her vehicle with a compound fracture in her leg. She is resilient but as night approaches she must face the horrors outside alone. Little of the nature of the apocalypse is explained but she has to fight a truly terrifying mutant and cannibals also pay her a visit. Some good jump scares and the creature is convincing. The terror is offset by flashbacks to her pre-apocalypse life, even that wasn't easy. She was an addict, found love but also encountered further heartbreaks. An intriguing horror drama written and directed by Mathieu Turi. 7/10. Showing again on the Horror Channel, Thursday 9th January at 11.10 pm.
I saw that! It wasn't bad, but the flashback thing made for very choppy continuity. I'd give it 6/10.
 
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