It looks like the main beef some of you have is that "it is boring". I don't even know how to respond to this properly.
All i can recommend is that you go watch another run-of-the-mill post-/apocalypse mass carnage zombie films and shut up.
"It looks like the main beef some of you have is that "it is boring". I don't even know how to respond to this properly." ~ImperorE
Hmmm... then I'm not sure why you did respond. I also found this movie boring - it did not hold my interest at all. I stuck with it though. I was not rewarded. I will say that most of the acting impressed me. Many of the actors allowed me to suspend my disbelief and take it as an actual documentary. A very boring and monotonous documentary. The title suggests a more action filled flick (either by physical action or dialog) but delivers the opposite. A dead body and a few gunshots. Some people reflecting on the "end of the world" while munching on snacks. More than an hour of talking in circles. To top it off, the end credits roll while a relaxing bluesy song grooves in the background. Actually, it's what led off the film as well. I shouldn't have been suprised that not that much happened. The sound level was all over the place too, but I understand that it was low budget.
EmperorE, I've given you something to respond to. Critique my feedback?
"Aaaawww, what's in the box? What the f#@k's in the f#@king box??"
Your opinion is valid. My post was directed more to those who called it boring without reasoning.
This. It's moderately convincing (there are NUMEROUS issues with implausible or impossible things but let's let those go) but unfortunately it's a moderately convincing bad documentary. Maybe it's some very clever post-modern experiment, and they deliberately made it bad, but I doubt it.
I think the line during the premiere (which is a sign you made a bad documentary itself) that they just show and you take away your own message is a bad sign. They had nothing to say? They (in character) why bother making a movie? Just film stuff and keep it for future generations I guess. A documentary should still have some clue as to a narrative arc still.
So, I didn't like it, at all, but not for the reasons most people do not. Countering the general arguments as I see them:
Its 10 years on. Most people are settled and know how to get food, etc. There's no scrambling for survival. So people are moving on and having lives. If anything, there's too many crazy people with hammers and shooting at them.
People are selfish douchebags. So they aren't all logically pursuing things to make civilization work. Probably because of the city. They have enough resources they are able to be semi-nomadic while in a loose community. Tighter communities probably exist and they would have more structured (even if not centralized) control and they would have pressure to do things that would help the community.
It's a single point of view. So whoever is annoyed by people wasting time with a film or other arts, that is the people interviewed. The film makers are those types, SF notwithstanding. Others couldn't be found, chased them with hammers, etc.
And, what's wrong with documenting things and preserving culture and history? 10 years after is a perfectly good time to document the history of the apocalypse. I can't hold that against them.
Silly things about plausibility, though:
- Cigarettes won't work this long after mfg.
- Not enough powered equipment. Diesel trucks and generators could keep working, so should have been.
- On the other hand, not enough stuff is broken. The portable generator we see for the gallery is gas. That won't work unless someone has been refining gasoline.
- Not enough destruction shown. The streets aren't even dusty. The fires set by the one guy are not shown even incidentally. Wide shots of the city need big blackened areas. The office towers are shiny and all glass in place.
- It should, moreover, be a polluted hellscape. No one is maintaining the pipelines and tanks and ships, so as process control failed in the first weeks, and everything else erodes and rusts later, the waterways (the bay especially) should be full of awful stuff.
- No religious nutjobs. There really should have been some. They got the conspiracy theorist, and that helped a bit.
- Not enough trash. No one is taking stuff to the landfill, so where do they take their trash? Some, at least, should be around, or there should be people spending time taking the trash to somewhere, visibly composing, etc.
- Not enough farming. People should not have that much time on their hands, so should be getting interviewed not just while scavenging but harvesting, plowing, sorting, cutting, canning, and the thousand other things that need to be done to keep your home warm and dry and your stomach full. Would have also looked cool to have something like a park turned into a farm, or a rooftop.
Good concept, acting was mostly pretty darned good really, but flawed in too many ways, too deeply for me.