As depicted in Mad Max, The Road, The Time Of The Wolf, The Postman, The Omega Man, The Book Of Eli and god knows how many other deeply bleak films (as well as televisions current big hit, The Walking Dead), post-apocalyptic films arent necessarily concerned with how the world, as we know it, fell apart. Theyre more concerned with depicting the world continuing to fall apart after whatever cataclysmic event occurs and very, very slowly. The post-apocalypse is the end of the world played out over Barbers Adagio For Strings. Utter lawlessness and lack of any real local or central government is usually a key feature of post-apocalyptic movies. So theres no police or army, no one in charge. With no one in charge, the social contract goes out of the window, as fear of punishment recedes. Ownership of property and human rights are reduced to people simply taking what they want, and violence is rife. Because these cheerful, cheerful movies arent quite horrible enough, the elements of sexual assault and cannibalism are often introduced: the idea being that people without any semblance of order can and will become less than human. The casual bleakness, washed out colours, monotonous mise-en-scèneand gratuitous, paranoid violence that tend to pervade post-apocalyptic cinema are pretty much a trope all to themselves, but hey at least there arent ravening undead trying to eat everyone
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
