I didn't love this one - honestly it just kind of missed the mark for me on all fronts. I felt wasn't all that funny when it tried to be, was depressing when trying to be ironic, etc. But I'm taking the time to write a review because it seems to me a lot of reviewers actually missed the message it delivers. Keira's comments indicate that this movie was conceived and even filmed before COVID mania really took hold - i'm not sure if that's exactly correct, but if so, it's uncannily timely. The real message of the film, it seems to me, is not environmental doomsday-ism as others indicate (although that message was delivered with all the subtlety of a rusty sledge hammer), but rather a warning against mass hysteria and groupthink.
Spoilers here - the main storyline of the movie is that the media and government have convinced the world that everyone is going to die horribly painful deaths in a series of sort of rolling environmental disasters - toxic clouds are blowing through towns across the world and, they're told, killing everyone in their wake. Video and news coverage (that we never see ourselves) apparently shows people suffering and convulsing after exposure. Obviously the world is therefore terrified, and trying to cope with the knowledge that mankind's days on earth are coming to an end.
The best recourse, ostensibly encouraged by the powers that be in moralistic terms, is to take a conveniently packaged pill to end your own life before the storm comes and brings its suffering with it. And in this twisted narrative, the characters think they're doing the right and humanitarian thing by even preemptively killing their own children.
We see along the way, however, that there are actually holes in the narrative and what's actually known, but those questions are immediately quashed, and anyone asking them is branded as, essentially, a fool and/or bad person. Is it really the environment fighting back, or is some foreign government behind it all? How do we really know that it's killing people? What if the pill isn't needed and we're actually killing ourselves to serve someone else's diabolical ends? Non-mainstream social media outlets viewed in private by some characters seem to offer different narratives entirely. But as these questions and doubts pop up here and there, the people asking them are immediately shut down, the people asking them shamed and ostracized for going against the grain. They're unambiguously branded as "bad" for daring to question.
Then, as we've suspected all along, we find in the very end that in actual fact the clouds are not necessarily killing people, it's apparently survivable. And we see that the whole world has been engaged in global hysteria and groupthink, unnecessarily ending their lives in a planetary, Jim Jones-style fashion. And we're left wondering, is that kind of global hysteria and groupthink possible? And are the cultural echo-chambers (news, social media, entertainment, etc) that we all are aware of creating the perfect environment for blind devotion to dangerous narratives, wrapped up as moral duty and righteousness? What happens when, as a society, we start to view the questioning and challenging of authority and the national narrative as moral failures?
Again, I really don't know if this was actually written before COVID as implied by some of the comments I've read, but if so, it's uncannily timely. Regardless, it's social commentary that isn't limited to the context of public health, but rather offers a somewhat cynical observation of just how far we've gone down the road of "don't question the narrative, or you're bad." And in doing so, it doesn't really lean left or right really, just holds up a mirror to our own blind biases and the blind, pseudo-moralistic groupthink that is the real threat to our future as a species.
Spoilers here - the main storyline of the movie is that the media and government have convinced the world that everyone is going to die horribly painful deaths in a series of sort of rolling environmental disasters - toxic clouds are blowing through towns across the world and, they're told, killing everyone in their wake. Video and news coverage (that we never see ourselves) apparently shows people suffering and convulsing after exposure. Obviously the world is therefore terrified, and trying to cope with the knowledge that mankind's days on earth are coming to an end.
The best recourse, ostensibly encouraged by the powers that be in moralistic terms, is to take a conveniently packaged pill to end your own life before the storm comes and brings its suffering with it. And in this twisted narrative, the characters think they're doing the right and humanitarian thing by even preemptively killing their own children.
We see along the way, however, that there are actually holes in the narrative and what's actually known, but those questions are immediately quashed, and anyone asking them is branded as, essentially, a fool and/or bad person. Is it really the environment fighting back, or is some foreign government behind it all? How do we really know that it's killing people? What if the pill isn't needed and we're actually killing ourselves to serve someone else's diabolical ends? Non-mainstream social media outlets viewed in private by some characters seem to offer different narratives entirely. But as these questions and doubts pop up here and there, the people asking them are immediately shut down, the people asking them shamed and ostracized for going against the grain. They're unambiguously branded as "bad" for daring to question.
Then, as we've suspected all along, we find in the very end that in actual fact the clouds are not necessarily killing people, it's apparently survivable. And we see that the whole world has been engaged in global hysteria and groupthink, unnecessarily ending their lives in a planetary, Jim Jones-style fashion. And we're left wondering, is that kind of global hysteria and groupthink possible? And are the cultural echo-chambers (news, social media, entertainment, etc) that we all are aware of creating the perfect environment for blind devotion to dangerous narratives, wrapped up as moral duty and righteousness? What happens when, as a society, we start to view the questioning and challenging of authority and the national narrative as moral failures?
Again, I really don't know if this was actually written before COVID as implied by some of the comments I've read, but if so, it's uncannily timely. Regardless, it's social commentary that isn't limited to the context of public health, but rather offers a somewhat cynical observation of just how far we've gone down the road of "don't question the narrative, or you're bad." And in doing so, it doesn't really lean left or right really, just holds up a mirror to our own blind biases and the blind, pseudo-moralistic groupthink that is the real threat to our future as a species.