Ever Since the World Ended isn’t going to be the Movie of the Week – it’s not quite good enough to justify the title – but it was interesting. The conceit is that it’s a documentary of San Franciscan survivors of a worldwide plague that dropped the population of the planet to somewhere around 1.4 million or so (assuming that worldwide survival rates were the same as the Bay area’s), twelve years on. I picked it up via Netflix; there’s some interesting stuff on there, particularly if you like offbeat and/or mildly obscure and/or kind of old.
As I said, it was an interesting film, but it had a bit of a problem: everyone and everything was a little too… neat. Twelve years of neglect should have had San Francisco starting to look like a forest: nature is highly aggressive when it comes to reclaiming territory. Also, frankly: the actors and actresses should have had considerably worse teeth than they did. Still, that’s a problem that’s probably beyond the effective control of an independent filmmaker. On the other hand, the creeping insinuation that the future is actually going to be a good deal more red in tooth and claw than most of the survivors might want to admit is one of the better aspects of the film.
All in all, worth checking out if you like mockumentaries, particularly ones with a speculative fiction feel to them. But, to be honest, I might not have watched it if I didn’t have an iPad and a couple of hours to kill.