Sorry, fans, this Netflix original is more of a road/buddy film than a disaster movie. There are only two short shots of destruction in action, one of which doesn’t come until the very end of the movie.
Director David M. Rosenthal’s film starts out with Will (Theo James, the Divergent series) taking a business trip from Seattle to Chicago, where lives his future in-laws, Tom and Paula (Oscar winner Forest Whitaker and Boogie Nights‘ Nicole Ari Parker, respectively). He’s on the phone with his pregnant fiancee Samantha (Kat Graham, The Vampire Diaries) when she hears something strange outside and the power suddenly cuts off across the country. No one knows what’s happening.
Tom, a retired Marine and all-around badass, immediately prepares to go to Seattle and rescue his daughter. He grudgingly invites Will to go with him, thus starting the road-movie phase of the picture.
Over the course of the trip, Will and Tom come to appreciate each other, in the best Lethal Weapon tradition, and they bond over their love of Samantha. They also learn never to help people in an apocalypse, because they are only ever out to take advantage of you. Will also learns to fire a gun, which comes in handy later.
After at least an hour of landscape porn and male bonding, we eventually learn that the disaster started with an earthquake off the coast of Los Angeles, followed by lightning storms moving east, a tsunami all up the West Coast, and Seattle being covered by ash(?). The latter is one of the better shots in the movie.
In the last 15 minutes, writer Brooks McLaren’s debut script takes the film in a weird turn toward a hostage-suspense setup. The last shots of the movie involve a completely predictable resolution of the situation, followed by the sight of a car trying to outrun an oncoming fiery storm (one of the short money shots mentioned above).
If you’re looking for disaster, this isn’t for you. If you’re looking for a macabre road/buddy drama instead, it might be OK to have How It Ends on in the background. Disappointing.
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