The documentary Ever Since The World Ended might on the surface sound a lot like the current craze of "found footage" movies that are popping up all over, thanks to the success of films like Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity. It's the story of the world after 99.9% of the population has been wiped out by a plague. However, rather than thrusting us into midst of the disaster, we are instead presented with the accounts of the aftermath of the pandemic from the perspective of a couple guys who just want to document their lives after the event. It's an intriguing conceit, but the film is ham-strung by the fact that this seems to have been the most laid-back apocalypse imaginable.
There's no scenes of bodies piled in the streets, or any portrayal of the mass chaos that must have ensued when a tragedy on this scale occurred. I don't mind that we don't actually see the event happen at all, but it seems like the people that remain were only mildly inconvenienced by everyone else on the planet dying. The remaining survivors seem to all hang out either around the dinner table together, looking well-fed and clean, or just having some laughs around a campfire in the woods.
One of the interesting dynamics in disaster movies is that people from all walks of life are forced to work together to try to survive. Here, everyone acts as if they've known each other since before the plague. There is one funny bit where a Native American man complains that since he is the only Native American left in the Pacific Northwest, everyone keeps coming to him for shamanic advice. The rest speak mainly in broad generalizations about how they kind of miss technology.
At one point, a woman talks about wanting to have a baby, but she wants to time it right so she can have it in the winter. This is all treated very casually, but to me, it seems like, if you are the last people on the planet, wouldn't you want to produce as many more humans as fast as possible?
A bit of potential drama is introduced when a guy known for starting houses on fire wants to be part of the bigger group, but he never really becomes anything other than "generic crazy guy", and the group ultimately just decides to leave him out. We never hear anything else about him.
The film picks up a bit towards the end, when some of the guys go exploring and get fired upon by an unknown assailant, but this mystery doesn't get explored any further, either. Now, it wasn't that I wanted the movie to degenerate into the characters getting hunted by crazed mutant cannibals or anything, but I just felt that the scope of this disaster isn't represented. There is some inventive use of shots of empty streets and fields, and a memorable image of the empty Golden Gate Bridge, but it never felt like civilization as we know it had come to a halt. The survivors know that there are only about 200 of them left in the Bay Area, but they never seem to want to know how many others are out there.
This, I think, is my main problem with the film- the lack of curiosity. No one seems to want to know what's out there, or what exactly happened. There's a scene with a conspiracy theorist who blames the government for the plague, but, once again, we never hear any more from him. The movie plays more like the filmmakers asked their friends about the idea of a massive, world-changing event, but it never feels as if the event has actually occurred.
It is worth noting, though, that they kept talking to a guy in a machine shop who looked a lot like Adam from "Mythbusters", and when I looked him up, hey, it was! He'd be a good one to have around in the event of Armageddon, I think.
Here's a trailer, although the sound's not synced up:
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