Ever Since the World Ended

I wasted my time watching this piece and now I'm wasting reviewing. But I feel that people should be warned. If you are ideologically blinded hippie then this movie is for you. Otherwise it is not for you. Simple. It is an incredibly boring ode to hippies' view of the society, their utopian idea how the world would look like if they got rid of the government and the whole mankind. They create a new society filled with "professions" that don't serve any practical purpose, that wouldn't let this society survive for longer than a few weeks. If they're lucky. I don't want to put any spoilers here so I will leave it like that. Be warned though. If you expect some fascinating vision of a post-apocalyptic world - don't get your hopes too high.

The only thing I enjoyed about this movie was the concept. I was hooked by the cover art and the synopsis on the back of the DVD and so I rented it. I was very disappointed in the low budget quality and poor acting. I could have made a better movie using my old mini-DV camera. If "B" quality doesn't bother, perhaps you could get into this. I can think of hundreds of cool ideas to take this idea - the idea that only 180 something people are left on the planet. Think of the infrastructure - buildings, roads....THINGS, you could pillage from billions of abandoned buildings! The film seemed to barely touch on some of the essentials you'd be forced to deal with right away, like how to sustain your food and shelter. Let's hope maybe a bigger studio or something buys the rights to this story.

The premise for this film is great: What would it be like to be part of a community of fewer than 200 people inhabiting the deserted remains of San Fransisco some years after a global pandemic? Unfortunately, the film totally fails to deliver on the premise. In such a world, one would expect the commonplace and the catastrophic to coexist, as they do in this film; it's just that the commonplace would almost certainly be nothing like that depicted here. The filmmakers seem to think that 12 years after the loss of 99% of the human population, a major city would somehow be magically preserved intact and undamaged, just as if it really were a quiet Sunday morning, which is presumably when some of the establishing shots were taken. More likely, San Francisco and practically every other city or town would be a burned-out ruin. The survivors' struggles would be quite different and much more in deadly earnest than is shown here. Anyone who is more interested in my extrapolation of what life would be like 12 years "since the world ended" may refer to my post in the message boards, since that would be too long to post here and since most of the other reviewers have contributed their quite legitimate surmises about how this imagined world really should look. If you're a first-year film-school student, this endeavor might be an interesting subject for critique; otherwise, stick with "The Road Warrior."

I teach a upper-level class on The Apocalypse at a Long Island College. This film was one that I chose, first for its brevity--75 minutes--but also for its totally thought-provoking exploration of humanity. Of course, one could quibble over some of the unexplainable aspects--for example, how do most of the characters remain so smartly dressed if there haven't been department stores in 12 years? But overall, it's important to see this film as an allegory, not unlike the Medieval play "Everyman," in which every character represents a "type," a "concept," or an "ideal." The acting is so absolutely natural that the viewer completely forgets that this is a scripted film. More than anything, it raises profound questions about the human condition for days after a viewing--always a good sign. I strongly recommend this film to anyone interested in stretching themselves philosophically. Good story, fine editing, terrific acting.

Nothing great, but this interesting faux documentary of a future 12 years after a virus kills offs most of the population does have some intriguing ideas and is done in total sincerity without an ounce of the silliness that usually accompany films of this nature. It all takes place in San Francisco where there are only 186 people left alive and the most interesting parts to me were the careful and civilized planning of procreation for the future and the opinions of the young who never experienced the world that we know and their ideas and interpretations of just what we were, how we behaved and what we did as a society. The acting is realistic by just about everyone and this is obviously cheaply made, but nevertheless, it is a slightly unusual experience that is helped by its short length.