Patrick Foley

I was very excited to see a movie advertised on a new platform that appeared to not follow the same stories often told on more mainstream media about the potential for chaos on our own homeland, how people will respond, and what lessons could be taken away from them. The story and movie had so much potential, based on the trailer. The problem I found, was that it seemed like the screen writers were either lazy or there were too many people throwing out ideas on how to make it a good movie. I envisioned a group of people drinking beers at night and saying “it needs to have a nuke” “it needs to have machine gun” “OH! I’ve got it! Let’s add corrupt local city officials, I hate my cities mayor!” I’m sure that at some point a guy said “ it needs tits!” And at some point I’m sure tits were in it, but the movie was funded and sold on a Christian platform, so the tits were taken out and replaced with a seemingly very random love story between two teenagers that popped up in the middle of the movie. I’m still struggling to figure out why that was added. This movie would have had to have been 8 hours long to really develop each major part- the nuke- the power grid being taken out and the actual extent of damage to the country-the background of city official who had beef with the homestead- the love story. The problem for this movie is, that the director agreed to all of these ideas, and failed to really tell the story. I found myself waiting for seemingly major parts of the movie to come together or develop but they never did. Instead, we don’t know anything about the nuke, who attacked the US, or the power grid being taken offline. I was waiting for the tale as old as time to really come together - the people coming together to fight off an invasion or actual threat, but the actual conflict was extremely anticlimactic. Instead, the movie pivots and concludes with making the point that if you own a 50 million dollar compound, have the ability to hire 15 ex special forces as a security detail and can produce your own food, you shouldn’t shoot hikers nor let your neighbors starve when they have an emergency.