The End begins where the children yearn to go: the mines. This is not the backdrop for “Fallen Kingdom” or other CaptainSparklez ditties, though. This salt mine is now the home to the last remaining human beings on Earth. Climate change has ravaged the surface world, rendering it uninhabitable. In an elaborate bunker simulating a mansion’s interior, Mother (Tilda Swinton), Father (Michael Shannon), and Son (George MacKay) have lived for 25-ish years with a handful of associates, like Butler (Tim McInnerny) and Friend (Bronagh Gallagher).
Here, everyone’s carved out an existence rigidly adhering to schedules and “proper” bourgeoise etiquette. Suddenly, out of the blue, a new face enters their world: Girl (Moses Ingram). An inexplicable survivor of the outside’s horrors, Mother and Father initially plan to kick Girl out. However, eventually, this woman’s screams and Son’s hesitancy to hurt her convince them to let her stay. The introduction of a fresh face inspires hostility from bunker mainstays like Mother and Doctor (Lennie James). Son, meanwhile, has his initial hostility towards Girl curdle into the first romance of the post-apocalypse. Oh, and this story is also a musical.
Contrary to fellow late 2024 “unorthodox” musicals like Joker: Folie a Deux and Emilia Pérez, The End actually revels in being a musical with a capital M. Songs aren’t just abandoned willy-nilly for an action movie climax nor is there creative trepidation over embracing these “outlandish” outbursts. The End’s finite cast constantly harmonizes their feelings and engages in lengthy dance digressions during breaks in verses.
Director Joshua Oppenheimer and cinematographer Mikhail Krichman even tweak the lighting throughout these tunes to reflect different moods and character ambitions. It’s also fun how the orchestral accompaniments to these various songs are so pronounced and unabashedly silly. Clanking xylophone keys and blaring trumpets dominate certain tracks, evoking the maximalist sounds of mid-20th-century musical cinema songs.
These welcome deviations from the standard world thrill in a cinematic landscape so often shackling musical storytelling to reality. The best of these tunes is easily an early ditty entitled “Alone.” Here, Son has his equivalent Flashdance's warehouse dance sequence in a pile of salt. MacKay’s physicality in this sequence is so striking. Everything from how he leans out of a doorway to his pelvic thrusts are captivatingly riddled with conviction. There’s also a messy petty anger to the lyrics that’s so fascinatingly raw. This is the inferiority of a petulant, spoiled mind put on full display. It’s a delightfully rude song and easily The End’s musical highlight.
The End secures commendable success as an original musical. Oppenheimer’s creativity, though, is more mixed in other areas. For one thing, The End can’t evade getting weaker as its runtime goes on. Intentional invariability defines these characters. It’s not an element manifesting through “shallow” writing. That same facet, though, does make one yearn for variety in The End’s second half.
The commentary on the 1%’s complicity in the apocalypse, for instance, doesn’t get extra fervent or cutting. There's little escalation, just retreading ground we've already seen before. The End's home stretch even indulges in predictable storytelling beats running counter to its innately absurd starting point. Why doesn't this oddball premise yield more unexpected narrative detours? The End’s penultimate image even feels like something that could’ve occurred midway through the feature.
The frustratingly repetitive nature of The End’s second half is compounded by strangely listless visual tendencies for non-musical sequences. Oppenheimer’s filmmaking and thematic fascinations suggest he’s crafting a successor to the works of Yorgos Lanthimos or Luis Bunuel. In projects like The Killing of a Sacred Deer or The Exterminating Angel, respectively, these directors used bizarre premises to condemn the uber-privileged. Both filmmakers, however, are famous for employing precise framing and imagery. Whether it's Lanthimos accentuating a Poor Things or Dogtooth dark joke with a clinical wide shot or the surrealistic editing in Bunuel's The Discreet Charms of the Bourgeoisie, these filmmakers excitingly upend the status quo with their visual impulses.
Oppenheimer and Krichman don’t quite accomplish similarly idiosyncratic imagery for The End. Standard shot/reverse-shot approaches dominate quiet conversation scenes. Extended bursts of camera movement are rare. Slightly subdued color schemes for interior sequences are a tad disappointing. To truly work as subversive cinema, The End also needed to challenge visual expectations. The world’s “normalcy” includes just accepting the excessively wealthy and their corruption. Upending “standard” movie visual terms is like throwing a middle finger at that normalization of extreme wealth gaps or income inequality. Unfortunately, too often The End settles for ordinary images despite being a post-apocalyptic musical where two lovers bond over flatulence.
The End’s pacing and visuals leave something to be desired. However, among this feature's better qualities, it finally got me on the MacKay hype train. Ever since his breakthrough role in 1917, MacKay’s stuck with exceedingly grim indie movies like Wolf, True History of the Kelly Gang, and Femme that emphasize his penchant for intense physicality. Here, though, MacKay excels in portraying someone with a lighter pep in his step. Alternatively a pouty brat or a wide-eyed idealist, MacKay realizes Son as the inevitable sheltered end product of keeping a kid confined to a wealthy bunker.
It’s a tremendously unique turn for MacKay in tone but one he executes with aplomb, especially in terms of his body language. Anytime he’s rapidly rotating both of his arms around in a circle, I found myself chuckling but also mesmerized. This is a profoundly absurd character that boils down to imagining what would happen if a “large adult son” grew up disconnected from even the sky and wind. MacKay, though, manifests Son with such a vivid tangible life. It’s a marvelous turn that suddenly made me see the light. MacKay has got the rizz, as the youth say.
The other actors assembled for The End relish imbuing enjoyably strange flourishes into their performances. I was especially fond of Swinton’s default style of singing where everything below her neck remains completely still while she slightly cranes her head out in a quietly eerie fashion. Not everything in these performances works, just like The End’s script and cinematography leaves potential on the table.
However, there’s something undeniably endearing about somebody who gets up onstage and sings in front of lots of people even if their vocals are wobbly. I should know, that’s me whenever I perform karaoke! Similarly, The End’s erratically successful creative bravura frequently charmed me. I’d certainly watch this unique take on the modern movie musical a dozen times more before revisiting a few minutes of footage from either Joker: Folie a Deux or Emilia Perez!