Getting there

Rating: 6/10 (21 August 2007)

This film doesn't merit a full whack of 10 stars, yet it obviously deserves more than average-skewing 'ones' and 'twos'. I wish people wouldn't do that...
I found C.O.M disappointing. Like many, I was keen to see it after reading positive reviews. Visually, I have no complains. Believable, gritty, oppressive. The story's premise, I have no complaints with. A lack of explanation for the infertility is inconsequential. In this film the intrigue lies not in the reasons behind the apocalypse, but how the characters react to the aftermath.
My main problems with the film were that I cared little for the characters, as others have said, there are few if any genuinely likable characters. Fair enough, they've all been brutilised by society's implosion, but the middle aged lady with the dreds is annoying, the girl is hardly endearing, and Clive has got a pole up him. if they had all met grisly ends on screen, I wouldn't have flinched.
Also, I was suspicious as to the films message. The characters we are supposed to view positively seem to lean towards the idealistic hippy school of thought and I fail to grasp how the issues raised by the film could have been mitigated by pot smoking, liberal attitudes to farting, or new age lifestyles.
Any film that gets you thinking has to be given credit however, add that to the visual element and the cinematography and I think we're talking about a reasonable piece of work.