THE END  dir. Joshua Oppenheimer, Drama / Fantasy / Musical / Sci-Fi, Not Rated, USA, English, 2024, 148 min.

A Golden Age-style musical about the last human family.

A wealthy family lives in an underground bunker two decades after the end of the world, to which they directly contributed.

“The End” is a narrative feature about a family holed up in a palatial bunker, after climate change has torched the earth beyond habitation. They retreated to the bunker 20 years prior. The dystopian sets built, the massive eerie underground caves and tunnels, whorled and grooved with time create disturbing reverberations, feel similar to some of the “re-enactments” in “The Act of Killing”. It’s how we imagine the end of the world. The cast never goes outside. We never see what it looks like “out there”. So far pretty standard. But Oppenheimer has chosen to make “The End” an old-fashioned musical. With songs composed by Josh Schmidt and lyrics by Oppenheimer, “The End” unfurls in a series of fits and starts, slightly repetitive, the story interrupted by musical numbers, some of which are contemplative soliloquies, others duets, others a group experience.

Written and directed by Joshua Oppenheimer creator of the award winning documentaries “The Killing” (2012) and “The Look of Silence” (2014) both shown at the Stonzek Theater.

A thoughtful, experimental piece starring Tilda Swinton.