Goodbye World (2013)

Simply A Masterpiece

Pretty Good

How sad is this?

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

I like apocalyptic movies - I like movies with human interaction/conflict - and I liked some of the things about this movie, but not much.This is the story of a pretty diverse mixture of past friends who happen to be getting together (after 8 years) in a remote cottage in Northern California - right when a nationwide attack which takes the power grid down - and civilization goes to crap. Fortunately, James, the owner of the cottage, is a prep-per who has done a good job of preparing for the apocalypse. The stress and contentiousness among the friends mimics "The Turning Point." but in a superficial and trite way. (If you have not seen "The Turning Point," you should.) The past catches up very quickly to the group as old passions, wrongs and new truths emerge as they try to deal with their current situation as well as the past. The dialogue is pretty hollow and many of the sub plots are predictable. So what was the one good point made in the movie?? ? Those who do not have the ability to protect themselves are at the mercy of people with guns. Once again, the naive sheep are at the mercy of the wolves and need a sheep dog. If you do not know what I am talking about - here is an excerpt from Dave Grossman's article on sheep, wolves, and sheep dogs: (Google Dave Grossman sheep, wolves and sheep dogs).My guess is the producers of the film were not trying to make this point, but it is an inescapable conclusion considering their predicament.The movie closes with everyone getting together and the communal family thriving. Not very likely or realistic.

I am a fan of post-apocalypse movies, and I thought that "Goodbye World" would be an entertaining example of the genre. Now, reading the description of the movie from the back of the DVD box, I was not expecting a lot of action or special effects (if any) - I got the idea that this would be a more down to earth take. But to be honest, I was really bored by the end results. The first problem is that it introduces the main characters very badly - it was as if the movie assumed we knew all about them beforehand, since they pretty much remain pretty vague and blank throughout the movie. The second problem is that these characters take the apocalypse pretty well for almost all of the running time. They eat gourmet dinners, soak in their hot tub, and partake in marijuana. Wow, that's really struggling against all odds! (Sarcasm.) And the ending is somewhat vague in a number of aspects. The only real praise I can give the movie is that it doesn't look bad for what had to have been a rock bottom budget. But overall, you'd be more entertained by a cheapie Italian rip-off of "The Road Warrior" made during the 1980s than this.

The ludicrous plot of Goodbye World makes Sharktopus seem plausible. Who's to know how a bunch of twenty-something's would react if the world found itself in the wake of a text-initiated terrorist attack (seriously?!), but I'm pretty sure this film serves as a record of how it wouldn't go down. I'm giving Goodbye World 2 stars: The first star is to acknowledge the half decent production quality. If only the filmmakers had had a decent script to work with, they may have come up with something worth watching. The sheer brilliance of creating such an abhorrent film deserves some sort of recognition in itself, and this is why I'm allocating Goodbye World a second star. Bravo!

The idea of a simple text messaging going around the world and overloading the network is great. It looked like it had real promise and would give the film makers a chance to explore a very different apocalypse setting.Unfortunately that is not the case and 90% of this film is just people smoking weed in the woods whilst babbling about entirely unrelated issues and drinking a seemingly inexhaustible supply of beer. The entire technological apocalypse idea takes a back seat so incredibly quickly that it might as well have not even been in the film.Yes suddenly losing communications, power and so on overnight probably would lead to people fighting in the streets. It likely would cause a rather dramatic collapse of society which the world may or may not recover from. None of these ideas are adequately looked at in any detail however and it really is just dull characters getting wasted in the woods. Ultimately it leaves you wondering what the hell the point in even making this film was.Waste of an hour and a half.