In the HBO and HBO Max series, The Last Of Us, the apocalypse occurs due to a sudden fungal infection. So deadly that it ends up causing civilization, as it had been until then, to completely collapse. The premise of the production is the new reinvention of an old obsession, the apocalypse, which cinema has fueled since its inception and ended up becoming a genre in its own right. For Hollywood, movies about the end of the world are a recurring narrative exercise.
However, imagining a universal cataclysm that devastates any trace of the human being is a complicated trope. Not only because of its endless variations, but because it usually places man as responsible for his destiny. Whether due to a natural incident, a war or an inexplicable circumstance.
Analyze the possibility of a catastrophe that endangers the existence appeals to a crucial element about the transience of life. But also to what anyone would do to preserve it. From major cities being besieged or destroyed in countless ways, to supernatural phenomena. Exploring the possibility of an apocalyptic disaster has become a way of analyzing time and the future. At the same time, the horrors that great cultural and social errors can cause.
The Last of Us It is the premiere of the year and you can only see it on HBO Max
We leave you five films that address the end of the world from different points of view. Monsters, natural accidents, dramatic goodbyes. A journey towards an ancient historical fear that cinema elaborates from an always new perspective.
Greenland: The Last Refuge
With a pessimistic air, this film reflects on the end of the world as an accidental phenomenon. Which implies that their characters will have to face the tragedy in the midst of chaos. When a comet is about to crash into Earth, John (Gerard Butler) will try to survive, despite knowing that he may not be able to.
It’s not the most original premise of all, but it is one that uses morbid curiosity about a devastating disaster with the greatest skill. With no chance of escape and a threat looming ever closer, behavior becomes primitive.
Greenland: The Last Refuge (The day of the end of the world) turns its plot into a collection of petty and subtle little facts that are disturbing because of their credibility. From betrayals to murders, the plot is more interested in showing the reaction of the future victims than the details of the disaster.
In the end, this apocalyptic film tries to be a plea of the unbreakable spirit of our species to live. Although it ends up falling into clichés and predictable twists, it makes it clear that humanity aspires to life. An underlying message amidst the jumbled collection of destroyed settings that the plot unsubtly parses.
28 days later
Jim (Cilian Murphy) awakens from a coma only to discover the inexplicable landscape of desolate London. Twenty-eight days have passed since the outbreak of an infectious outbreak that destroyed civilization in a matter of weeks.
But the protagonist of this apocalyptic film does not suspect it and its first minutes are a impeccable exploration of uncertainty and primitive terror. When he finally manages to figure out the reason for the devastation, he can only run away.
Beyond any metaphor or subtext, this film about the end of the world is a look at survival as an immediate impulse. Boyle uses the zombie genre to analyze the nature of horror, but especially the perception of identity. Over and over again, the empty city, devastated by an invisible phenomenon At first glance, it is a representation of the individual. Of the one who survives and of the monsters that hide in the shadows.
For its last installment, the argument demonstrated that the apocalypse can be more than the lurking of imminent danger or the destruction of hope. Which, in reality, is even the impossibility of imagining the future. Without a doubt, the hardest point of a brilliant premise.
Blindly
Malorie (Sandra Bullock) is pregnant and trying to deal with being a mother as best she can. The first few minutes of this adaptation of Josh Malerman’s book of the same name are misleading. The camera follows the character through a city full of seemingly fortuitous small events. A car accident, a suicide, a series of chaotic medical emergencies.
Soon, Susanne Bier manages to create a claustrophobic atmosphere that hides a phenomenon that can never be fully explained. In her movie the end of the world happens to face the unknown. A type of circumstance that expands with the speed of an infection without its origin being understood.
The only clear thing is that the threat is capable of driving you crazy with a look, so surviving implies blindness. Isolation, the torment of paranoid suspicion. Who is infected with the strange disease and who is not?
A premise that Bier’s apocalyptic film handles with care and skilfully exploits in its crudest moments. Gradually it becomes evident that Blindly it is much more than a story about an unexpected apocalypse. At the same time, it is a reflection on the loss of humanity on a total level.
the last prophecy
Based on the book of the same name by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, the production narrates an apocalypse based on biblical prophecies. Also in the possibility that good and evil are absolute concepts. This plot oddity, starring Nicolas Cage in another of his unusual roles, is much more a reflection on the intangible than a disaster movie.
Even so, the plot relates the panorama of what could happen if the gloomy predictions of the mystical predictions were fulfilled literally. From the celestial dome opening in two between incandescent flames to the sudden disappearance of millions of men and women. the last prophecy Go through all the points of terror based on the atavistic announcement of the apocalypse with precision.
For its final sequences, this apocalyptic movie makes such a disconcerting plot decision that it makes it an example of weird cinema. Halfway between the narration of the end times and the power of beliefs, the plot is as disconcerting as it is curious.
2012
Predictions about the apocalypse abound in universal history and the noted date of the year that gives the production its title was one of the most enduring. For Roland Emmerich, it was the opportunity that allowed him to stage an inconceivable catastrophe through exaggeration. What would happen if instead of a cataclysm they were a group of them? Even more disturbing, dozens of unexplained events in rapid succession?
The disaster film expert made the decision to explore in 2012 all the possibilities of universal devastation. At such a total and crazy level that several of the scenes are hilarious instead of terrifying.
Still, this film about the end of the world managed to capture some of the oldest collective concerns in a kind of successive review of underlying terrors. From earthquakes to tsunamis, even the possibility of the earth’s hull splitting open. Emmerich achieved what seemed impossible: mix all the ideas about a final catastrophe in a single story.