It's a Disaster

Year 16, Day 125 - 5/4/24 - Movie #4,724

BEFORE: I was out late yesterday managing a special screening of a documentary about "X-Files" fans, but then I stayed up really late to watch this movie.  I may be posting late if I just sleep all day Saturday, which is "Star Wars Day". I don't have any "Star Wars" movies to watch, but maybe I'll try to catch up on "The Bad Batch" if I have some time.

David Cross carries over from "Kill Your Darlings".

THE PLOT: Four couples meet for Sunday brunch, then discover they are stuck in a house

AFTER: No mothers in this film, it seems, but that's OK. In just three days I'll get to the first real planned Mother's Day film, and then three - or four - others will follow. I've got a couple of options on the film order later this week, because I really should block out the path to Father's Day before I finalize things. Making a mistake at this point could send me scrambling to find movies to bridge the gaps, and I'd rather just work with what's already on the list, if that's at all possible. Plus I still have to figure out where the Doc Block is going to go, I'd love to put it AFTER Father's Day, and use it to get to July 4, but to confirm that I'd have to figure out first WHICH movies about fathers I could fit into the chain.  I guess the other option is to go from Mother's Day right into the Doc Block, and hope that I can land a doc about a famous father (and there are a few on the list, I believe) right on the holiday.  We'll see, the problem is I'm working every day after today until Saturday, and that means really no time to stop and figure out a chain.  Damn, I should have done it today on my day off, now I might be cutting things a bit too close. 

So how many comedies about the end of the world are there?  There's "This Is the End" and "Don't Look Up" and now I've learned about this one. So, OK, three?  Ah, Google has just reminded me of a few others, like "The World's End", "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World", and "Rapture-Palooza", and "How It Ends". I have seen all of those, honestly that's why I keep such detailed notes, because I didn't remember those off the top of my head - and then there are zombie comedies (zom-coms) like "Zombieland", "Shaun of the Dead" and "Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse".  Yep, I've seen all of those too.  I'm not saying I enjoyed all of them, but I've seen them.  

So maybe with tonight's film I've now hit for the cycle, and I won't have to watch any more - especially if there are no more.  The pandemic may have killed this very specific movie genre, because while we used to believe that we'd all die when a comet hits Earth or the aliens would blow us up or we'd blow ourselves up, we've all seen first-hand now that a virus could just as easily take us all down, in a much more efficient manner, but honestly I haven't seen the wave of pandemic movies that I thought we'd get, even if I count movies like "Dumb Money" or "Glass Onion" that just reference it, there don't seem to be a lot of them. OK, "The Bubble" and "Alone Together", sure, and "Locked Down", but it's hardly the wave I was expecting. I think once filmmaking started up again, most people wanted to make a movie about literally anything else. 

Anyway, what happens when four couples get together for their usual monthly (?) brunch hang, and while they're all talking about vegan foods, how long couples should wait before they get married, and Marvel's Canadian superhero team, Alpha Flight (I can confirm this is a real thing - shout-out to legendary comic writer AND artist John Byrne) the power and the phones stop working, and the eight people search around the house for a working radio AND batteries, the only problem is that it's 2012 and nobody listens to regular FM radio any more, everyone either has satellite radio or just listens to their favorite songs on their own iPhone. So yeah, it takes a while for this group to learn what's happened in the world, because if there's a disaster, what's the first thing you do, you either check your phone for alerts or you turn on the TV!  But this gives them a chance to pair up while they search, and we learn that one couple is getting divorced, and a couple of affairs among this group could be the likely reason. 

When they finally find a radio and pick up the emergency instructions being broadcast, they learn than somebody has set off a bunch of dirty bombs in their city AND several other cities in the U.S.  That means radiation and possibly even nerve gas could be heading their way.  OK, now it's time to seal up the house's vents and ducts, which sets off a debate over whether it's better to use DUCT tape or DUCK tape. I'd go with the former, because the latter doesn't exist - the product was created to use on ducts, not ducks. Please commence with the shunning of anyone who calls it "duck tape". 

Then the film takes a very ominous turn, when the Jesus freak in the group suggests that they all need to make sure that they're part of the coming Rapture, and that means a very Jonestown-like solution, returning to the brunch table and drinking poisoned wine.  Surprisingly, the science expert in the group agrees with him, because the effects of nerve gas on the body would cause a more painful death - but it's a bit weird that the scientist and the religious nut somehow ended up on the same page here.  Plus, NITPICK POINT, suicide is technically a sin, so killing yourself so you can get to Heaven faster and with less pain and suffering would, according to the rules of religion, possibly prevent you from getting to heaven at all. Sorry, but if you believe in this system, there's no way to game this system. 

I won't reveal the fate of the characters, partially because I'm not sure myself. It's spoiler-free in a way because absolutely nobody saw the film in theaters, possibly because some people believed that the world might end in 2012, and this film got a theatrical release in April 2013, it seems they missed their window on the topic by at least a few months, it seems. After bombing in theaters, they tried to release the film on Vine, which if you remember was a social media site for videos up to six seconds long, and absolutely nobody wanted to watch an 88-minute film in six second chunks, it turned out.  Wow, this could be the worst marketed film of all time!  Even with a budget of just $500,000 I doubt this film ever made anybody any money. 

Also starring Rachel Boston (last seen in "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past"), Kevin M. Brennan (last seen in "The Turkey Bowl"), America Ferrera (last seen in "Dumb Money"), Jeff Grace, Erinn Hayes (last seen in "Bill & Ted Face the Music"), Blaise Miller, Julia Stiles (last seen in "A Guy Thing"), Jesse Draper, Laura Adkin, Rob McGillivray, Todd Berger and the voices of Will Coleman, Helena Wei, Jared Sosa. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 last-minute regrets (or mimosas)