After a good few years gap, I've re-watched two American disaster movies.
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How it Ends (not Howard's End!) is essentially a road trip flick with a bit of added Sci-Fi chucked in. A prospective son-in-law and his ex-military and aggressive father-in-law-to-be set off in a car from Chicago to find the apple of both their eyes, the wife-to-be/ daughter in Seattle.
Much fresh gasoline is needed and there appears to be no end of huge, full Jerry cans along the road as long as you're prepared to shoot, ram and burn your way to get to them.
Basically, a growing bromance set against a global and unfathomable catastrophe, it's dour tone and vision of rising civilian violence reminded me of the more recent Civil War.
We never get to find our what caused the world-wide disaster.
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Annihilation is about the Shimmer, a strange and rapidly expanding geographical zone where everything mutates.
Soldiers were sent in. One came back. Scientists were sent in. One came back. They were a married couple and the film is more or less an analogy of grief, a terrible world turned upside down.
Within the Shimmer things are changing. Crocs are massive, bears scream with human voices and plants grow into people. There are some fantastic special effects and startling imagery here.
Yukky moments include large internal organ snakes and scary bits include a tense mutated bear attack.
The cause of the shimmer remains unknown but there's a definite suggestion it's alien.
I enjoyed it more than How it Ends as the sci-fi is cranked up to the max.
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Have you seen either of these readers?