Ever Since the World Ended (2001)

Thanks for the memories!

It is a performances centric movie

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

a lot of heart, couldn't have asked for more. many faux documentaries have terrible acting (overdramatised), but the actors in this film were so believable sometimes I forgot this was fictional! it was refreshing to see a movie that actually showed positivity in an 'apocalyptic' story, rather than crazy rape scenes or murder (not saying this stuff wouldn't exist, of course). but i have to say i really appreciated the humanity of it all, and it just takes into account that when all is lost, people can still be good, collaborating together to improve their lives, like they have always done historically. 2 scenes really stood out in my mind: the first being that of when the one group found the man murdered in their path. even though most of them feared for their safety around this man when he was alive (and some of them wanted him dead anyway), the emotions expressed in the group was not just of relief, but also deep sadness. the second scene that i found pretty profound was the teenage boy who never experienced the nostalgic past that all the adults seem to long for, and it is presumed that he was the 'executioner' of the dead man. the boy didn't do it out of rage or contempt, but probably more for the reason that none of the adults could or wanted to do it (or maybe to some degree, he understood that it would hurt much less for him to do it). he was symbolic of the new world, coloring the skies with every shade of gray.

In the 12 years of scrounging since everyone they loved died and society collapsed, nobody really seems to have changed that much. When they aren't having dinner parties, surfing or smoking weed, they look like they have been.The improvised dialogue is more about what the actors think of our present society than a convincing picture of a future one. The woman who wants to have a child and raise it on her own is particularly ridiculous. Who in their right mind would seek to become a single parent in a world with no reliable medical care or food supply? The movie actually improves quite a bit in the last 30 minutes. The cinematography gets better, the acting gets better, and there is finally some tension and plot connected to the setting.Then the movie ends.

So a plague hits San Francisco (and presumably the rest of the USA &/or world??), and 10-12 years later only 186-200 people survive in the Bay area. The punchline: the survivors shown (about 40) in a "documentary" being made by a couple other fellow survivors, all wear polished haircuts; makeup; clean, fashionable clothes; clean-shaved faces, or perfectly groomed goatees and soul patches. Judging by their diction, they almost all sound like they wandered off a college campus or out of a coffee house. The man who is supposed to be menacing to the documentary makers when they enter his property, swings a hammer and grunts, but it just looks like a random clean-cut person pretending to be threatening. The houses shown are freshly painted, the streets have no vegetation popping through cracks, and the only sign of oddity is a shot of the Golden Gate Bridge looking sort of dilapidated. People seem minimally traumatized, there's no explanation of how the plague disappeared or how it was caused or how likely it would be to return. The current generation of kids is happy to live in a quiet peaceful world, there are plenty of supplies left in the huge city so sparsely populated, city water will last at least 20 more years, as will some backup generators and solar panels. Surfer-looking dudes fish and talk about getting back to the land by hunting. Pot is smoked freely. Kids are taught lessons in renaissance art while sitting cross-legged in a circle on a floor in a sparkling clean room. A well-mannered white-haired woman houses a small commune in her large home on a hill, where they eat salad and fresh bread at dinner. Trouble only strikes when a jaded emergency worker who once burned peoples homes, returns to town. He's shot off-camera and people are relieved. Some other anonymous shooter wounds one of the pot-smoking documentary makers when he and others venture out of city limits. He's mercy-killed by one of the friends and no mourning is shown. Um, DUDES? There was a PLAGUE!!!! It killed millions!!!! There's hardly anybody around except corpses!!!! Since when would you have time to teach art? Or keep your house freshly painted? Or put on makeup? Or lounge around smoking weed? Where would you even get fresh makeup? Or such clean, fashionable clothes? Who's doing your hair??? Wouldn't you all be too busy growing the veggies and baking the bread you're eating in your Pier One decorated living room? I'm all for utopia, I'm all for a movie about a utopia, but perhaps this plague wasn't the best premise to use as foundation for how great the world would be with less people. And if the real-life film makers did want to show the flip-side of this utopia, they wouldn't even have needed a bigger budget. Just scout locations for run-down houses, and tell your actors to cut each other's hair for a few months as opposed to getting professional haircuts. Especially the actor who was supposed to be living in the woods, camping in the forest canopy -- unseen by his friends for years. You might want to tell him not to wash his freshly bleached clothing for a few months, and ditch the soul patch.

To my mind the most basic problem with this film is it's failure to envision how such a group of people might chose to govern themselves. In fact there doesn't seem to be any form of group governance at all. It's as if the film makers had no idea that people ever lived in communities before the industrial age. We are presented with a group of characters who are concerned with teaching piano, reviewing art, and building museums. No one is farming, no one is hunting, no one is milking cows, and everyone is well dressed and clean.I came away from this film wondering why everything, and everyone, is so clean. From the group home of women and children who spend their time teaching piano and putting out the good china to the loaner who walked out of the city five years previous to live in the trees, everyone is showered, combed, brushed and shaved. The city, deserted as it is, is clean. Is there a team of rogue street sweepers out there keeping the place up? I have a fascination with TEOTWAWKI films, and I was willing to give this little move a try. But there's nothing convincing about the environment, or the characters. I wish the film makers would have looked at history and how people live before the rise of modern civilization, they would have made a better film if they had.