Ever Since the World Ended: Grade A

A

Ever Since the World Ended (2006)

Unknown actors; Writer and co-director Calum Grant. Co director Joshua Litle.

An unnamed virus wiped out most of the world’s population a dozen years ago, and this is a documentary film interviewing the few survivors. There are only 186 people left in San Francisco (all middle-class white except for one Native American). The idea is to explore today’s society by imagining what it would be like without the population density and our social, technical, and economic infrastructures. How do communities get along without police and judges, for example? A small amount of electricity is available from storage batteries taken from millions of useless vehicles. Food comes from fishing and hunting, but oddly, not agriculture. What would education, religion, recreation be like? The movie does an adequate job of exploring these topics and it could be used in a high school social studies course to stimulate discussion. Unfortunately, the overall message is depressing. It seems that not a single intellectual survived the plague, so the story has dim-witted people doing and saying dim-witted things. Maybe that’s how it would be, who knows? The acting is so good, it is hard to believe the interviews are scripted. They are utterly believable and a pleasure to watch.