The End (2024)

Plot of The End: We encounter a family of a father, mother, son plus a friend and a butler and a doctor living in an underground bunker of some luxury in a salt mine. There has apparently been a catastrophe on the surface of the earth caused by the use of hydrocarbons. The son who is twenty years old has never seen the surface but he has photographs and creates dioramas of what he thinks the surface might look like. The mother arranges paintings on the walls of the place and they all swim sometimes in an illuminated swimming pool. The salt mine is also electrically illuminated and at times something wizzes along in a tube which winds through the caverns. When their proximity alarms go off they go outside to find a young black woman unconscious. She recovers consciousness and after an argument about what to do with her, she stays with them. But by now they are all consumed by guilt, the father because he worked in the oil industry and the others because they left people on the surface.

Content: No sex or nudity, although it is evident that the son and the girl become very friendly not with the total approval of the mother. The doctor deals out tablets of various sorts, mainly to reduce the effects of disturbing dreams. The group dine extravagantly. They still have wine after 20 years. They practice their emergency drills although we are never quite sure what the emergency is. They go out into the salt mine which is spectacular and dance. At times they burst into song.

A View: I don’t know how much this film cost to make but so far its returns at the box office have been virtually zero. There were a few of us in the screen in Madrid but both my wife and I were surprised when they burst into song. But in time we got used to it and so were able to drop off for a bit. Two quite old people in the adjacent row to us left about half way through when the cast burst into song for the umpteenth time. Some amateur  reviewers have said it is the worst film they have ever seen. It is billed as a fantasy so all the questions we might have remain unanswered. I have given it 2/10 because the salt mine is spectacular, but it is not worth two and a half hours of your time.

Fun Facts: Only one trivia item on IMDb and, amazingly, 61 producers.