Road

Year: 2009

Grade: B+

Country: USA

Director: Hillcoat

Review

not entirely sure what to make of the film, but it’s pretty good. going into the film i knew only one thing and i think that helped me enjoy it a bit: that the film never explains how the world comes to an end. not knowing that would have been a distraction because i would have been fixated on knowing what caused the fires and lack of living things. i guess that in the final analysis it’s a hopeful film about a boy who learns from the good and bad of his father and goes into the world in his own way. he has a hopeful view of a world that is seemingly hopeless. throughout these post-apocalyptic films i always ask myself at what point i would end my life. for me this film presented the post-apocalyptic world in a more bleak way than usual. generally there is a great disease or everyone turns into a zombie or there has been a nuclear disaster, but people generally want to survive to rebuild society. here, it didn’t seem like that was the case at all. it seemed as though humans would never be able to live on earth again because the earth was barren and seemingly uninhabitable. so i don’t know when i’d end it for myself, but if i couldn’t at least live like a human then i don’t think i’d want to go on. it was pretty good at creating that atmosphere as well as creating an atmosphere of constant fear and very few enjoyable moments. really depressing and scary, but in the end hopeful. maybe that’s like the u.s. 2001-2008.