The plot: A mysterious contagion has reduced the world to a
barren wasteland. Among the only known survivors are Paul (Joel Edgerton), his
wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) and their son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), who have
set up shelter in a secluded house in the woods. They soon come across Will
(Christopher Abbott), his wife Kim (Riley Keough) and their son Andrew (Griffin
Robert Faulkner), who stumble across the house and are soon invited in to share
it. However, suspicions start to arise between the two families, with the
constant fear of one of them being infected, some drastic measures may have to
be taken.
Joel Edgerton is one of those actors where, regardless of
what production he’s attached to, he always delivers with a solid performance.
This film is no exception, as he takes the role of the overprotective father
and twists into areas where he is genuinely unsettling… and yet, given the
circumstances, he’s a guy you would want on your side. It’s the kind of
reluctantly agreeable character that makes for some of the best psychological
works. Ejogo channels a similar sense of protection in regards to her family,
while also sneaking in elements of fear about what she knows the people around
her are capable of. Harrison Jr. is given the bulk of the psychological effects
of the scenario to work with, and he definitely gets across that he is
terrified of that scenario and what it could end up doing to him.
Abbott and
Keough both pull through as the other family in the equation, managing some
truly warm and natural interactions with the others while still holding a
certain amount of apprehension in their presences, both in their reaction to
their surroundings and their surroundings reacting to them. David Pendleton as
Sarah’s father makes for a very harrowing performance early on, keeping the
worst case scenario well in the audience’s mind as we see the fearful
interactions throughout. Between the performance and the practical effects to
show the effects of the plague, this is not a fate to be welcomed and it makes
what happens after grip even harder.
In the face of a disease that could wipe out everyone you
hold dear, isolation starts to look like a really good idea. In the face of
what isolation can do to the human mind, as shown in Travis’ increasingly bleak
nightmares, it helps to have others around you. When these two notions
intersect, the brain simply isn’t capable of processing both at once. As a
result, what we get here is a collection of people who both know that infection
is a death sentence, but that it will be a lonely time on death row if they
only keep to themselves. That sense of paranoia permeates pretty much
everything we see, and it hits even harder when it comes to what we don’t see. Psychological horror is at
its best when it’s kept vague; when threats are clearly evident in the story
but both the characters and the audience are never absolutely clear on what
those threats are.
Not that paranoia is the only thing on offer as, when we see
the two families interact with each other, we see them connect over ultimately
basic things. Things like favourite foods, whether someone needs to take a
shower, or talking about one’s family. When the end of the world arrives, all
of the conveniences we take for granted will likely end with it. In that state,
we’ll probably end up going back to a more basic lifestyle, one dedicated to
the bare essentials for living. Of course, when in that position, you start to
really appreciate what you have left. The scarce bits of food you can scavenge,
the miracle of running water, the company you keep that you can share some
laughs with; it all becomes vital to your existence, and you treat as precious
because of that.
It is because of that heightened sense of placed importance
that the urge to defend what you have starts to grow. The slightest cough or
misplaced word and, suddenly, that person you thought you could trust starts to
look far less so. Stories like this with a post-apocalyptic bent to them tend
to emphasis the survival of the individual as opposed to the collective; events
like this rarely leave a lot of people behind, and those that are either go
crazy from the isolation or somehow manage to begin the long process of
rebuilding the world again. When it comes to the latter, trust becomes a valued
commodity, one that is easy to dole out but far harder to return. As the
tensions rise within the house, and distrust continues to grow between the
families, we see how these are people who have been pushed into a very dark
corner and will fight tooth and nail to get out of it.
Of course, when you
cling to those around you as much as you do, your intent to protect one’s self
starts to become compromised. Sure, those people that we just met look pretty
sketchy, but the people already here? There’s no way that there’s anything
wrong with us, right? Distrust
stretches across Paul and Will’s respective family circles, but they always
seem to hand-wave away the possibility that they have already been affected.
Before too long, as paranoia gives way to all-out aggression, the families show
themselves to be so bent on looking out for themselves and weeding out the
infected that they fail to realise that the plague has already hit them. Not
the literal plague of the story, but a figurative one of the mind, one that
reduces a person to being so distrusting that, before they even realise their
own misdeeds, it’s already too late.
All in all, this is an incredibly solid piece of speculative
fiction. The acting is outstanding, with Joel Edgerton and Kelvin Harrison Jr.
absolutely nailing the psychological carnage created by the setting, the
direction and visuals courtesy of director Trey Edward Shults and DOP Drew
Daniels make nature at its most docile seem like the most oppressive force in
the universe, and the writing highlights a lot of effects of forced isolation,
both the appreciation for the smaller things in life as well as the paranoia
that someone or something could take them all away. Knowing how doomsday scenarios
like this factor into a lot of modern thinking (get into a deep enough
conversation about gun rights, and stuff like this will inevitably get brought
up to justify certain attitudes), stories like this that show the possible effects can do a
lot of good. Thankfully, because of the efficacy of all parties involved, I
think this film will indeed do some good.
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