The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The Last People on Earth refer to a body of films where a handful of people (sometimes as little as one or two) find themselves the only ones left after everyone else on Earth has disappeared or been killed.
Such films usually follows the survivors’ connections with one another (sometimes romance where the arrival of a third often leads to a love triangle), their internal conflicts, their struggles to subsist, their visiting the ruins and being able to wander freely without social restrictions.
The first of these films was the post-nuclear drama Five (1951) concerning naturally enough five survivors. The genre continued through several of the Nuclear War films of the 1950s where people would awake in deserted cities or survive a nuclear apocalypse. The genre was revived with The Quiet Earth (1985), which removed nuclear explanations from the mix. Thereafter explanations for the deserted world have been mysterious or quite often none offered at all.
This comes with a great premise – two men are woken from cryogenic suspension only to find one of their cryo-tubes broken and they discover their purpose there may not be what they were told
A French variant on The Quiet Earth adapted from a comic-book about a group of young people who wake up to find themselves alone in a deserted city
A rehash of the The Quiet Earth with two American tourists waking up to find themselves in a deserted Iceland. There seem few more prettily photographed places for the End of the World to take place
Arthur C. Clarke’s book is one of the all-time SF classics; this mini-series adaptation counts as one of the biggest book-to-film abortions in the SF genre handled by people who know nothing about SF
One of the first films from Roger Corman. Set among a group of survivors in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear holocaust, Corman blatantly steals the plot from Five and adds a mutant monster to the mix
The world’s first disaster movie concerning a worldwide flood. This has some extremely impressive effects for the era showing New York being drowned. Less interesting are the dramatics in the ruins
We’ve all heard the theory that we might be living in The Matrix. This asks the question of what happens when it is announced that the simulation is being shut down
SF cinema’s first ever portrayal of nuclear war. The film is sometimes incredibly naive and mostly wants to make a parable of racial tolerance. It is often heavy-handed but also holds moments of undeniable lyricism
Australian film that is a romantic comedy take on The Quiet Earth, the classic work about three people who awake in an entirely deserted world
An SF film with minimal resources – just two characters in a desert – that deliver a modest variant on the Enemy Mine scenario about an alien and human enemy stranded on a planet
The third film version of Richard Matheson’s book is only a remake of the previous version The Omega Man. Crucially, this throws out the essence of the book for a far less interesting piece about Will Smith fighting mutants in the ruins
Despite the title, this is not set on Jupiter’s moon but is strictly earthbound. It is one of the new genre of Cli-Fii (or Climate Fiction) works set in an interesting environmentally devastated future
The first adaptation of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend and the only one faithful to the novel with Vincent Price as the last man alive facing vampires outside his door
Seven people wake up in a deserted London with no memory of who they are only to find that something is stalking them. An intriguing hook let down by a tired and overused ending
Graham Skipper directs/writes/stars in a film about the last man on Earth trying to bring his wife’s ghost back from the dead while beset by an entity that has devoured the rest of humanity and just wants to be his friend
Reminiscent of The Quiet Earth, this concerns a bus of people who end up in a deserted Hong Kong, The film seems unsure whether it is comedy or drama, while it creates an intriguing mystery about what is happening only to leave it unanswered in a frustratingly abrupt ending
George Clooney starred in Gravity and now directs/stars in his own scientifically grounded space film about the last man trying to communicate with a surviving space mission following a catastrophe event on Earth
Comedy from China about a man abandoned on the Moon, the last person left alive in the aftermath of the destruction of the Earth
There is a great title and the germ of a good idea here – two rival street gangs and a white cop are forced to set aside their difference and cooperate to deal with the zombie apocalypse. Alas, as a directorial outing from the writer of the Sharknado films, this emerges cheaply and tattily
This has the amusing idea of casting a Last People on Earth film with two Valley Girls. This starts well but the film seems to run out of steam halfway through
Experimental film about the last man left on Earth after a nuclear war who develops a series of imaginary companions
The second film version of I Am Legend, this rewrites the book’s vampires as mutants and abandons its mood of paranoia for a fantasy of hippie utopia and Charlton Heston in square-jawed action hero mode
The first major film confronting nuclear war full on with the world’s last survivors gathered in Australia. Slightly ponderous today but nevertheless full of potent imagery
TV mini-series remake of the 1959 nuclear war film. With no longer the need to make messages as in the original, the story has been expanded out with a lush romantic sweep
Evocative New Zealand-made Last People on Earth drama. Although the film reaches a frustrating ending that leaves much unanswered, the earlier scenes showing a man alone in a deserted world have an uncommon poetry
Austrian film where three people aboard a space station survive a toxic cloud that obliterates all life on Earth below
The Stand is regarded as Stephen King’s best novel, an epic that depicts the final showdown between good and evil in the aftermath of civilisation. The mini-series adaptation was alas placed into the ham fists of one of King’s worst adapters. Mick Garris
The Stand is in my opinion Stephen King’s greatest book. The question is whether this new mini-series version will improve on the laughably failed 1994 version
Danny Boyle’s sleeper hit presaged a big return for the zombie film during the 2000s/2010s. Not a bad film even if Boyle is conducting major borrowings from other works like The Day of the Triffids and Day of the Dead
Enigmatic film in the vein of The Quiet Earth where everybody vanishes except for a handful of survivors who have to now deal with creatures the lurk in the dark
How interesting can a film be that consists of nothing more than two people talking? The answer is surprisingly good. Boasting that it is Jordan’s first SF film, this produces an extraordinary series of conceptual reversal twists while never venturing beyond being a man and a woman talking on a beach
One of the first films about a mysterious catastrophe that empties the world of all but a handful of survivors that formed the template of later films like The Quiet Earth
This starts promisingly but it soon becomes apparent the classic story, which only takes place between two people, has been rewritten for the Young Adult audience with the addition of a third character and the focus on a love triangle, while abandoning most of the book’s themes