Film review
This week, we choose 7 (post) apocalyptic films to watch at home.
TO COINCIDE with the release of the disaster action thriller Greenland on Amazon Prime Video, which predicts an extinction-level comet strike on Earth, Damon Smith chooses 10 (post) apocalyptic films to watch at home this week.
AD ASTRA (12, 118 mins) Sci-Fi/Action/Thriller. Brad Pitt, Donald Sutherland, Tommy Lee Jones. Director: James Gray.
Available to rent or buy on various platforms Brad Pitt blasts into space and delivers an out-of-this-world lead performance as an astronaut with deep-rooted daddy issues in director James Gray’s sci-fi thriller.
Ad Astra begins with a series of devastating electrical storms, named The Surge, that results in more than 43,000 deaths on Earth.
Gray’s film hard-wires the visceral thrills of Gravity and the existential angst of 2001: A Space Odyssey in a near-future setting that slingshots from our stricken planet to Neptune via the dark side of the moon.
Brad Pitt’s classically handsome features ripple with emotion in close-up and he excels at conveying turmoil beneath his gung-ho trailblazer’s placid surface with an expertly timed twitch or downwards glance.
It’s a meaty, complex role and the Oklahoma-born actor is mesmerising in every scene before his internal monologue interrupts the chilling silence in space, where no-one is supposed to be able to hear your primal scream.
Director Gray quickens pulses with bravura action sequences including a lunar buggy chase and a memorable encounter with carnivorous gravity-defying baboons.
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR (12, 184 mins) Action/SciFi/Fantasy/Thriller/Romance. Paul Bettany, Chadwick Boseman, Josh Brolin, Benedict Cumberbatch, Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Tom Hiddleston, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Pratt, Mark Ruffalo. Directors: Joe Russo, Anthony Russo.
Streaming on Disney+ and available to rent or buy on various platforms
War demands sacrifices: civility, morality, compassion, responsibility and, ultimately, torn flesh and innocent blood.
There are many heart-breaking sacrifices in Avengers: Infinity War, a blockbuster battle royale choreographed at dizzying speed by directors Joe and Anthony Russo to unite characters from across the sprawling and sinewy Marvel Comics franchises.
The head-on collision of The Avengers with protagonists from Black Panther, Captain America, Doctor Strange, Guardians Of The Galaxy, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Spider-Man and Thor delivers an eye-popping spectacle.
A small army of special effects wizards bring to life hulking supervillain Thanos (Josh Brolin), who continues his quest to claim the six Infinity Stones, which will allow him to exterminate half of all living organisms in the universe with a snap of his digitally rendered fingers.
BIRD BOX (15, 124 mins) Sci-Fi/Thriller/Horror/Action. Sandra Bullock, Vivien Lyra Blair, Julia Edwards, Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich. Director: Susanne Bier.
Streaming on Netflix.
Emulating the sensory-starved scares of A Quiet Place, director Susanne Bier’s apocalyptic thriller draws inspiration from Josh Malerman’s novel to imagine a mysterious force that decimates the human population.
Anyone who looks at the source of the devastation is compelled to take their own life.
Survivors must literally turn a blind eye to avoid a grim demise.
In the aftermath, Sandra Bullock puts on a blindfold to lead two children (Julian Edwards, Vivien Lyra Blair) on a harrowing trek to safety, including drifting downstream in a rowboat without visibility of Mother Nature’s terrifying obstacles.
Bier embraces myriad horror movie tropes to stage slickly efficient action sequences and steadily increase the body count.
Oscar winner Bullock elevates the otherworldly elements with an emotionally raw performance that tugs our heartstrings even when the plot beggars belief.
CONTAGION (12, 102 mins) Thriller/Horror/Romance. Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Jennifer Ehle, Laurence Fishburne, Elliott Gould. Director: Steven Soderbergh.
Streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Netflix and available to rent or buy on various platforms
Steven Soderbergh’s stylish thriller, which imagines the panic when a deadly new virus threatens to become a pandemic, sends a fresh trickle of sweat down the spine.
Scott Z Burns’ smart script zigzags from Hong Kong to London, Tokyo, Minnesota and beyond, examining the reaction of governments, scientists and the public, unearthing personal dramas in the midst of devastating global catastrophe.
Only once does the film resort to what might be considered cheap disaster movie tactics, watching nervously as two surgeons peel back the scalp of the first victim to examine her brain for signs of the infection.
Otherwise, Soderbergh shows cool restraint, killing off major cast with little fanfare.
Matt Damon delivers a terrific performance as a family man unable to stop his loved ones dying in his arms, who will do literally anything to protect his daughter from the same fate.
IT COMES AT NIGHT (15, 92 mins) Sci-Fi/Horror/Thriller /Romance. Joel Edgerton, Carmen Ejogo, Kelvin Harrison Jr. Director: Trey Edwards Shults.
Available to rent or buy on various platforms.
If you go down to the woods in writer-director Trey Edward Shults’ efficient psychological thriller, you’re sure of a nasty surprise.
Set in the aftermath of a viral outbreak that has decimated America, It Comes At Night gradually tightens the thumbscrews until we’re prickled with the same paranoia as the characters.
The desire to protect and preserve overrides the fear of death in Shults’ lean script, which transforms men into monsters inside a family home with boarded up windows and tightly bolted doors.
Friendship counts for little during this brutal and sometimes bloody battle for survival.
As one anguished father reminds his son: “You can’t trust nobody but family… as good as they seem.”
Instead, characters continually trade suspicious glances, searching for tiny signs of betrayal that might warrant a twitch of a sweat-glistened trigger finger.
When violence explodes, it’s graphic and ugly, and the moral compasses of good men whirl sickeningly out of control in the name of love.
A QUIET PLACE (15, 90 mins) Sci-Fi/Horror/Thriller/ Romance. Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds. Director: John Krasinski.
Available to rent or buy on various platforms
Silence is golden – and imperative for survival – in John Krasinski’s nerve-shredding horror thriller about a family battling against sightless otherworldly creatures, which hunt by sound.
A single sneeze or cough could be fatal, and the lean, propulsive script co-written by Bryan Woods, Scott Beck and Krasinski takes sadistic delight in our discomfort until we’re ready to scream on the characters’ behalf.
In the opening hour, A Quiet Place is a masterclass in old-fas
hioned scares and suspense including a horrific scene with a nail protruding from a wooden basement staircase, which begs to be glimpsed through trembling fingers.
The gasp-inducing pay-off is telegraphed and Krasinski confidently tightens the screw with slickly engineered set pieces.
In the absence of dialogue, the film relies on beautifully calibrated gestures to convey emotion.
Don’t speak, don’t breathe, and pray. Silently.
THE ROAD (15, 107 mins) Thriller/Horror. Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron, Garret Dillahunt, Robert Duvall. Director: John Hillcoat.
Streaming on Amazon Prime Video and available to rent or buy on various platforms
The future isn’t bright, not in the slightest, in John Hillcoat’s post-apocalyptic thriller, adapted by Joe Penhall from the novel by Cormac McCarthy.
The Road unfolds through a grimy, colour-bleached lens and when misery is poured upon characters’ heads, the consequences are chilling and often gruesome.
To offset the relentless doom and gloom, the film clings onto any scraps of sentimentality and engineers as much of a lifeaffirming resolution as it dares.
The emotional weight rests almost entirely on the shoulders of a gruff and heavily bearded Viggo Mortensen and Australian child star Kodi Smit-McPhee.
Cast as father and son in a desolate landscape littered with unspoken dangers, the two actors create a believable onscreen dynamic that holds our attention.
Hillcoat orchestrates edge-of-seat set pieces like when characters seek refuge in an old house and discover why the door to the basement is locked.
It’s not a road movie you’ll forget in a hurry.