The Quiet Earth
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Movie Reviews of The Quiet Earth
Movie Review: Alone Again hear on Earth
Summary: 3 Stars
I saw this movie years ago when I was fresh out of college and fell in love with it. It is a very slow moving, thoughtful movie.Movie Review: Much less here than meets the eye.
Summary: 2 Stars
<**SPOILERS**> As there is really not much to spoil.
What is worse? A sci-fi movie that let's you know that it is junk early on (so it can be turned off) or one that starts out well, meanders for an hour or so, then finally comes to nothing (luring its victim into watching the whole thing)?
This movie is the the latter category. It looks good. It's not major big budget effects but the modest effects it does have are not tacky. Good not great. The story concerns three characters (Old Smart Guy, Young Woman, Hunky Young Ethnic) that are the only three left in the world. The first, OSG, wakes up (in that cinema rarity, full frontal male nudity) to find that he seems to be the only person on a undamaged earth (except where planes crash etc). I mean the ONLY person, living or dead, as there are very few bodies or little piles of white dust or anything. There also appears to be no living things other than humans either, the earth is indeed quiet. OSG does the usual last man on earth things, looks for survivors, gets on the radio (sure to reach everyone who scans the police bands all day), gathers up useful and delicious things, gets drunk, makes speeches to cut-outs of famous people, tries on women's clothes, the usual. So far so good. Then YM turns up. OK. Not much happens as OSG investigates what happened, and YM investigates the empty stores. There is a little (very little, and that's good) sex segment with OSG in bed (another full frontal), and YM going bottomless behind her maid/nurse/whatever outfit (crotch gag goes here, comic relief?). Next, enter HYE, as he cunningly traps OSG at machine gun point but turns out to be OK after he sees YM soon after. (Good news: no automatic sex, no violence, no rape etc) Now we are on "Five" and "World, Flesh and the Devil" territory but not much develops. OSG turns out to have been a scientist involved in the program that did all this and he determines that the device involved will make it happen again soon. Perhaps you are wondering why these lucky people are still here? Turns out that being near death at the critical instant is the key. I am not impressed but at least it does go easy on the well-worn "long tunnel into the light" stuff. Action with trucks to get explosives to blow up the machine fills up the next few minutes. OSG goes forward to suicide bomb the building where the device is. So what else? (I guess the tension is just too much...) HYE and YM (finally) rip off their draperies for a little perfunctory leg-over (perfunctory apart from the interracial angle perhaps, another edgy element to complement the nudity?)just in case the world ends (as if Jay in "Dogma" HAD gotten his wish). OSG blows the thing up, lights flash, OSG is on a beach (is he On The Beach?) on a dark earth with a Saturn-like object in the sky looking much bigger than the moon. THE END. What happened? Where did HYE and YM go? Is the earth out by Saturn now? (If so shouldn't OSG be flash frozen along with the waves offshore?) Is Saturn near the earth? (The gravitational issues here boggle the mind) Is there any prospect at all of a future humanity? Your guess is as good as mine. In short we have another one of those "leave it up to the viewer", BS, cop-out, non-ending with what is supposed to be an impressive visual.
This movie is a major disappointment as it starts out looking like the real thing, meanders becoming neither really interesting, nor steamy, nor real trash to finally peter out into mush. No message, no moral, no point and nowhere near enough "oh, Wow!" to compensate with mindless entertainment for what is lacking as literature. It is mercifully brief at 90 minutes. It would have been REALLY annoying have sat through a "Solaris" sized epic for what this delivers.
The movie is based on a novel. I wonder if the novel is really much better but, as so often happens, not much more than its title got into the movie. (This was the case with the sorry movie "Freejack" "based on" the fine novel "Immortality Inc". In that case it was a spectacular car crash not a title that was only thing that made it into the movie.)
I recommend that you flip it once on Netflix if you must, but it is definitely no masterpiece and, for me at least, a long way from a keeper. One star for looking good, one for not being pure trash.
Movie Review: Not as good as I expected.....
Summary: 2 Stars
With all of the "cult-like" hype surrounding this film, I had pretty high expectations when I sat down to watch it. Unfortunately, I was rather disappointed.
It started off cool.... wierd ( naked guy? ) but still cool. The initial build-up kept me at least interested if not on the edge of my seat. The problems arose when the film began to really plod along in the middle and didn't know what to do with itself. It's as if they ran out if ideas after all of the cliche "last guy on earth stuff" happened ( shopping spree, going a little wacko, etc, etc. ).
I got rather bored in the middle and was waiting for something to happen but nothing really did happen. Once the guy and the chick started hanging out, it got lame. And NO, I wasn't expecting aliens, explosions, violence or any of that. I'm 100% OK with drama, but the drama has to have some interesting points, backstory, or tension to make it worth while and this didn't. Just another "Last guy on earth that does everything you would do if you were the last person on earth" movie.
And, the ending or entire concept of the film never really settled on anything. Apparently, there were strange natural forces at work here but unlike 2001 A Space Odyssey where sort of the same thing happend, this movie never even poised any questions or made you ponder about what actually bappened. You didn't even care. The ending was just "ZAP" and the guy was walking around by some new planet that looked cheesier than the worst Star Trek sets.
NOT recommended, but do as you wish....
Movie Review: Dated and Over-Dramatic
Summary: 2 Stars
While many people seem to have fond memories of this 1985 film (based on the high ratings), I am baffled as to why.
Watching for the first time this year (2008), Quiet Earth comes off as campy, over-dramatic, and just flat out cheesy. The special effects seem like something out of a 60's movie, the actors do things relational-wise that are on a whim, without showing motivation. And the ending is muddled and doesn't explain the last 90 minutes. As the credits role, we are presented with an image that leaves us completely baffled as to what happened. Is the actor in Heaven, or an alternate reality?
Who knows? ...but better yet, who cares.
Frankly, the best part of the movie was Alison Routledge revealing her perfect backside in scene 10. Other than this, not much to remember.
If you like love triangles, 80's hair, long, tusk earrings, and naked balding men, this movie is for you!
Movie Review: The Quiet Earth
Summary: 2 Stars
Waking up and finding himself alone, with no explanation then, finding out it was his own research companies fault, then finding and falling for the only ...fortunatley YOUNG girl in New Zealand, then finding another bloke, a big young Maori, she changes horses. Being the only 3 alive they sort of stay friends. All very odd, Anyway, the original bloke works out the Apoclypse is going to happen again, But finding out they were alive because they all were in the process of dying, the previous time, they decide to try and kill themselves again, but how, when, where (yawn: why ?) so very drawn out about nothing much.