The Quiet Earth - LetterboxD Review

Original Review Link

I discovered this film by accident a few years ago when trawling through the internet for movies that had an “apocalyptic” or “dystopian” storyline or texture… Coming off the back of quite enjoying I Am Legend and watching The Walking Dead and National Geographic’s factually dubious but nevertheless entertaining Life After People, I was in the mood for some abandoned streets, some lonely souls and some theological and philosophical stories about what it would be like after the world had ended… Well with The Quiet Earth, I got a lot more than I had bargained for.

Having traveled and lived in New Zealand for a year and having developed not only a fondness but a love for Kiwi culture, I couldn’t wait to see a definitively New Zealand take on the post-apocalypse sub-genre.

The appeal of The Quiet Earth for me rests in its ability to tell a complex story about a world without people and put a (then) unique spin on the last man alive fable by replacing the end of the world / apocalypse motif with a wholly different continuation of life across other realities motif, long before Fringe and JJ Abrams ever got hold of the idea and turned it into mainstream success!

The small cast are perfectly suited to the story and go about the task exceptionally well. What could have descended into clichéd Maori character / antagonist, never overstepped its boundaries. The female interest had enough substance to her to rise above the 2 dimensional love interest that she could have been and our main protagonist, helped in part by having such a fascinating story and world to live in, was likeable and complex enough to keep my interest and move the story along without ever resorting to over or under complicated technobabble about what, on the face of it, could have been a very trippy and overly complicated final act.

Ahhh yes, the final act and more importantly, THAT final scene. I was also lucky enough, when I watched this for the first time, to know very little about said ending, only the comments of a few bloggers whose claims that it was possibly one of the greatest endings in film history could only be “so far off the truth” that they must have been written in jest. Well immediately, on first viewing, I was blown away by it. On second viewing, my appreciation grew in a Fight Club kind of “you see so much more the second time by knowing what happens” to realise just how good not only the ending is, but how much fun, complex and simple the story is. What could easily have been trashy, over complicated, convoluted or pretentious nonsense, instead, is and incredible ride through one world and, by virtue of the closing scene, into another world.

If you haven’t seen it, this is essential Sci-Fi. If you have seen it (but only once), it is always worth another watch, there is bound to be something else for you to notice and take from it. The tapestry is that rich, it would be impossible not to!

I rated this movie 5 stars out of 5.