Earth Abides (2024)

The end of the world, Hollywood wokester style.

If Hollywood is to be believed the end of the known world after a devastating pandemic wont be horrific. No no, it will see immune people staying in their suburban neighbourhoods, idling away the time until they meet a friendly neighbour to two. Heck, they might even hook up and have a child, without any risks or complications, you never know.

There wont be issues with packs of hungry dogs, plague rats, piles of rotting corpses spreading disease and infecting ground water, failing infrastructure, unmaintained nuclear energy plants going Chernobyl, not to mention people turning on each other, in a nation where guns are as plentiful as candy.

So don't flee to the country, stay in the city and all will be more or less, okay. Black Death 2.0 "be damned". If you can believe this, you can believe the core premise of "Earth Abides". I have not read the book but I can only assume its more realistic than this utter nonsense.

If the writers had drawn inspiration from the grim, desperate world crafted in the original series of "The Walking Dead", this would have worked considerably better. I'll add there are no issues I can see with the acting or production values, its the story that doesn't work for me.

In summary, let down utterly by an implausible story that simply has no legs. Everything else suffers as a consequence. A marginal watch for those who believe "the food chain" is a pre-packaged, supermarket shelf.