Nini Leaver

What a waste of time, great cinematography and actors in this mess of a film. Well, the actors with some exceptions like the hammy old priest who gurns his way through scenes. The plot holes were so abundant, I lost count, such as the unexplained ‘escape’ of 3 main characters at Redbad’s baptism after a bit of a scuffle. Redbad decides to save his sister from the castle, fails, then kind of gives up. Redbad is condemned to death by the blonde seer whose superstition he loathed. Then later, he consults her, she says he did nothing wrong and he mourns her like a mother. Huh? The teleportation over great distances was just silly. Why, at the end, wasn’t the baby (who miraculously survived a great fall) shielded from danger? The mother just stood there looking gormless. All this etc. etc.

So an angry, white, implicitly biased woman and her fragile, useless husband go on vacation with their casually cruel, sex pest teenage son and dissociated, Friends obsessed daughter. They stay in the stylish house of a rich, charming, dishy black investor and his sassy, clever daughter. All face the apocalypse with boozy indifference interspersed with pointless panic (going to visit a nasty survivalist neighbour for unspecified ‘medicine’ to treat the mystery illness of the now toothless son; shouting at a confused herd of deer instead of running away from them). But the happily vacant girl gets to watch the longed for final episode of her show. The end. Props to the Obamas for getting in their favourite themes in this bloated project: the climate ‘crisis’, curse of social media, a probable coup, white fragility/casual racism/bad dancing and Tesla is a menace.

Brilliant cast, story line and pace. I wish I could watch again for the fist time. Fabulous show.

This is surely a film about suicide. How it’s tragedy runs through families - the unresolved grief played out in the characters through their fears; their private hells unseen and misunderstood in their isolation. A superlative exploration.