Apocalypse films

From: David Tetzlaff (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Jan 20 2009 - 17:15:01 PST


There are at least three different narrative frames that might be
considered here:
1. those that lead up to an apocalyptic climax or end: The End, The
Last Wave, The Bedford Incident
2. those that posit an apocalypse in the backstory or beginning as
the basic premise of whatever occurs during the body of the story:
Road Warrior, A Boy and his Dog, Last Man on Earth, The War Game, La
Jetee, Lord of the Flies, The Postman ;-)
3. those whose story time roughly coincides with how long the
apocalypse takes from initiation to relatively thorough destruction:
Night of the Living Dead and many other Zombie/infection films. Might
be nice to throw Shaun of the Dead in there as a comic riff on the
themes of anxiety...

12 Monkeys tricks up the basic premise of La Jetee in order to be
something like all three at once, not that that's necessarily lauditory.

I must disagree with Patrick. Maclaine's The End may be the most
properly apocalyptic work of art ever.

It also strikes me that there's a metaphoric connection between first-
person-ish accounts of suicide and a more general apocalypse, so
Anticipation of the Night and/or Chronic might be interesting fits
for this series. Someone already mentioned Safe, which I would not
dispute as apocalytic, though it's a very individual one.

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