Premise Doesn't Work For Me

Rating: 5/10 (23 February 2015)

I could see it was a professionally crafted movie with high production values and with a good Directing effort, and it's always a pleasure to see Michael Caine and Julianne Moore. But the premise just didn't work for me. If you love senseless, extreme violence with no cogent motive for the protagonists, this movie is for you. I kept saying out loud, "why are they killing each other? Did I miss something?" Let me get this straight, massive civil unrest and armed revolt occurs and the government and the people go on killing sprees because women cannot get pregnant. People attacking in groups like zombies and everybody turning into cold blooded murderers. Killing each other for no reason and swarming strangers like the infected in 28 days later. Why was that mob of people in the country chasing their car and shooting at them? They didn't explain that, they explain nothing. The military and police treating the population like Jews in Nazi Germany. Their alluding to the Nazi thing was anything but subtle. They even huddled the common people into a Ghetto! For what reason? Why were the military treating so harshly the innocent civilians in the train station? Yet another thing that remained unexplained. It's one of those movies in which they refuse to explain anything. They'll hook you, keep you watching to see if they will explain what is happening. But they never do and it's a tease with out reward. The same type of thing they did with the Phantasm movies. A lot of weirdness, and you're expected to invent your own explanations. Like an old plot method installed by a recent graduate of film school. This is England, but there is an Army of militant armed Muslims marching in the street, yelling Allahu Akbhar. Mega-weird. Why was that scene in the movie, and what was it supposed to add to the story? And why are half the English people Arabs? I think it was representative of the Director's challenge here. Keeping things moving along quickly with constant tension, weird scenes, and dramatic scenes of suffering and brutality. He has to keep it moving fast (The main characters never stop moving. They're always in flight and being pursued) so the viewers won't think about the absurdity of the premise or try to figure out the many absurd things in the movie. Not the infertility thing being absurd. But how society reacted to it. I think the reverse would happen from this premise. People would be humbled, sensing God's judgment, and society would become more peaceful in a reflective age of waiting for the extinction of mankind. They'd blame God and then blame each other and then blame themselves and then pursue redemption. It would be a multi-step process to acceptance such as people have with grief. People wouldn't kill each other wholesale, go berserk or burn down cities just because all women became barren. I don't think the author really understood the human race. I suspect the author wrote this book or story at a young age.