The End Review: Tried So Hard And Got So Far, But... [TIFF 2024]

"The End" is a movie I wanted to like for the sheer ambition of it. Joshua Oppenheimer, director of the amazing documentaries "The Act of Killing" and "The Look of Silence," continues his exploration of how the perpetrators of genocide live with themselves with a dark sci-fi dramedy about a family responsible for a full-on planetary extinction event, living in privileged delusion hiding in their bunker mansion as some of the last humans alive. The impressive cast includes Michael Shannon as the self-aggrandizing oil exec father, Tilda Swinton as the dishonest surface-obsessed mother, George MacKay as the naive son raised within this bunker, and Moses Ingram as a troubled outside visitor who might be able to challenge the family's twisted worldview — if she's not twisted by them first. And if that's not enough to get you interested, it's also a musical!

Alas, not every big swing will pay off, and "The End" has to be one of the biggest disappointments of the fall 2024 film festival season so far. Its coldness and alienation are by design, and those wanting to play devil's advocate might even be able to argue its lapses in quality as a musical also contribute getting across its message. The problem is it can't find nearly enough to say to justify its 148 minute runtime, exhausting interest and failing to build its intriguing big ideas into a compelling story.

The first major problem with "The End" is that it's not a good musical. It's been described as attempting the style of "Golden Age musical," but Rodgers and Hammerstein would snore through all these forgettable tunes. I'm not familiar with the other works of composer Joshua Schmidt so I can't tell you how "The End" compares to them, but the film's other composer, Marius de Vries, has produced many superior movie musical soundtracks, including "Moulin Rouge!," "La La Land," and (the closest match to this in terms of artsy weirdness) "Annette," so this comes as a real disappointment.

Of the four lead actors, George MacKay and Moses Ingram have strong singing voices, so their numbers are more enjoyable than the ones led by Michael Shannon and Tilda Swinton, who ... were cast for their acting talent. You could maybe argue their not-great singing is a deliberate choice for their characters, though in that case it might not go far enough in making that clear. Going the extra distance to make MacKay's character really suck at dancing in one of the film's only real dance sequences is one of the better jokes.

I'm also disappointed how little imagination is put into the staging of these numbers. The evocative sets — the massive salt mines outside the bunker, the walls within covered in classical paintings — should be a playground for great set pieces, but maybe four of the dozen or so musical numbers do anything evocative with their choreography, and even then the attempts at spectacle feel half-hearted. Why even make this a musical if the filmmakers were going to half-ass what makes musicals special?

"The End" finds its strongest satirical insight through the sheltered son's attempts to understand what life was like before everything ended. He's built a historically questionable diorama of the outside world where the Chinese railroad workers are happy to die on the job ("It moves me in a very personal way"), and he's co-writing his dad's memoir to tell future generations (assuming they exist) that fossil fuels did NOT cause global warming and that his dad was the best CEO because he "cared" about people.

The arrival of Moses Ingram's outsider forces the son to start questioning the lies he's been taught, as well as sparking the parents to reckon with feelings of long-suppressed survivor's guilt. In her first dinner with her new "family," the outsider breaks down in tears telling the story about how she left her real family to die — of course her hosts also abandoned people (and worse), but they've rationalized these actions so deep down that they can't even comprehend why she feels such guilt about it.

So there are some interesting things going on with these characters. The problem is there's just not enough going on to sustain 2.5 hours of interest, especially with the spectacle elements so lacking. The inclusion of a few supporting characters working within the household doesn't help much; the butler (Tim McInnerny) is a tired gay joke, while the subplot focused on the family friend (Bronagh Gallagher) is just intense enough that you might wonder if the movie would be more intriguing with them in the focus.

While "The End" is certainly unique in its blend of genres, being different isn't enough to warrant a recommendation. If you want to watch a post-apocalyptic movie with great sets and Tilda Swinton being wacky, check out "Snowpiercer" and have a better time. As far as experimental musicals satirizing the ruling class go, this pales in comparison to Stephen Sondheim's final stage show, "Here We Are" (I realize it's not fair to compare any musical to Sondheim, even half-finished exceedingly obscure Sondheim, but I can't escape the mental comparison). This could have been a masterpiece, but it's ultimately a swing and a miss.

"The End" screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and will be released in theaters later this year.