Entertaining and tense, but quite meaningless

Rating: 6/10 (16 January 2019)

There have been a lot of this kind of apocalyptic road movies. World seems to be coming to an end with weird events and at some point they embark on a journey to get to a safe shangri-la kind of place. Usually a child is involved. Recent Cargo comes easily in mind as similar. From older movies The Road and Happening are also quite similar.
I watch a lot of horror and sci-fi so Netflix recommended this to me immediately and I also went for it almost immediately. I have to say I did enjoy it, but in the end it doesn't mean it's a masterpiece of a movie.
The story is interesting and also scary at times, but in the end there are really no answers to anything. Nothing is revealed about why the "happening" happened nor what it really was. This goes pretty much for Sandra Bullocks character too. She's very distant and negative for the whole movie and atleast I didn't figure out why. Maybe I dosed off at some significant scene, but to me she was mostly just annoying. It seemed she never even wanted a child, but why. How did that guy she met at the house eventually tolerate such character for years. She didn't even name the kids. There was this scene between Malkovich and Bullock where she stated her dad was similar "asshole" as Malkovich's character, but if they based Bullocks character on that only, it seems a bit far fetched. Her sister was totally different after all.
Despite Bullocks character being annoying, the acting in general was pretty good. As were rest of the production values.
So all in all it kept me interested, but don't expect a huge payoff in the end.