Never judge a book by its cover. This one will make you LITERALLY SHIT YOURSELF
Another book review? I'm afraid so, fellow cinephiles. One of the perils of working a full time job means less time spent watching movies and more time either working or commuting. But don't worry - Apocalypse 2012is perhaps the most terrifying book I've ever read. If that sounds a bit hyperbolic then it's quite apt. Apocalypse 2012 is the most hyperbolic book I've ever read. I'm still not entirely convinced it wasn't written by Roland Emmerich or that Woody Harrelson character from his movie adaptation. Thank you, Lawrence E. Joseph for ruining my lunch break and making me want to jump on a super boat and hide behind a mountain or whatever the hell was going on in that movie.
That said, if the world does end in 2012 then I suppose it makes this blog amongst the pinnacle of human achievement. Bear with me here... look, if the world ends very soon, then that makes my writing in 2012 as like the very thing millennia and millennia of humanity have been building towards. Fuck Shakespeare and Mr. Dickens; my shitty movie reviews might very well be the last thing you ever read. And the first thing re-discovered by future generations/aliens when our Internets are discovered by future generations. Relax, I'm being at least 20% ironic here.
Lawrence Joseph's affable yet whiny prose takes in Mayan calendars, solar flares, grey goo, the Yellowstone supervolcano, nuclear oblivion and practically every other world-ending possibility you can imagine. Despite touching on religious apocalypses, Joseph's emphasis is on the science of it all. His findings: yes, it is entirely likely that we might all die in 2012. Thanks for that Joseph, way to put me off've my cheese salad baguette. He ends one chapter with the epithet "Have a nice day". Fuck off, I've just pissed all over my work trousers.
I hope for Joseph's sake that the world does end in 2012 though. After all, he's put a lot of work into his Apocalypse, and if this is as much of a dud as the year 2000 was, then he's gonna be left with egg on his doom-mongering face. Do I think that the world is about to end? Apocalypse 2012 is scary and convincing but no, I don't. I don't think the universe is stupid enough to take its cues from a terrible Roland Emmerich movie. I'm far too small-minded to even concieve of the world exploding while I'm still on it. And I hold no water with old Mayan prophecies or religious bullshit. Mind you, it's always good to be prepared. So my advice is to start building the Ark, stock up on the bottled water/tinned goods, obsessively play Fallout 3 and invest in a really good motorbike. Get John Cusack on speed dial too. Dude's got some hella good driving skills.
Apocalypse 2012 is well-written, well-researched and entirely effective in its aims. That is, if its aims are to scare the shit out of one's readers. There's hardly a jot of reassurance or optimism (no, "we'll evolve into a better form of humanity... but you'll all die first" doesn't count as optimism) in the book, nor any real underlying point to it aside from rampant scaremongering and over-the-top metaphors about sharks and such. Books and movies theorising about 2012 are all a bit pointless, when one stops to think about it. After all, we'll find out for sure in a couple of years anyway. Have a nice day.
Tuning into the Warhammer 40k audience comes The Mutant Chronicles, a dingy piece of post-apocalyptica which pits good actors against a terrible storyline and incomprehensible CGI. It's like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, except dingier and darker. It's based, apparently on a role playing game so is a bit like a videogame adaptation except not.
John Malkovich cashes in an easy cheque as a ruler of one of the 'corporations' that has turned the world to ashes. That he's not playing an evil character is possibly the only surprise this movie has in store. Everything else you can probably guess from the poster alone. During a futuristic neverending war, some silly corporations awaken an ancient machine which turns people into evil mutants. So the prophecies say, a small squad of toughies must travel deep into the centre of the Earth to blow the machine up. Ugh, plots based on prophecies are almost as bad as movies based on RPG games (see also Dungeons & Dragons).
The Mutant Chronicles is so predictable and hackneyed that it has Sean Pertwee continuing his grand tradition of dying in every movie in which he appears. There's very little tension or characterisation, and the mutants look crappy. Aside from Tom Jane, Malkovich, Ron Perlman and Devon Aoki (playing against type as a samurai-sword weilding hottie), there are apparently other people in The Mutant Chronicles. But I couldn't tell you who they are or what they contribute, because it's (a) too dingy to see who the fuck anyone is, and (b) no-one does anything other than scream a lot and shout at bad CGI mutants.
It's inoffensive, mind. And the forces of Jane & Perlman make it watchable enough, even if you'll have forgotten the whole thing ten minutes later. It's just too dull, predictable, pretentious and inconsequential to matter in any larger scheme. It's humourless, self-absorbed and full of ugly cinematics. Do yourself a favour and go play Fallout instead.
If you find that many post-apocalyptic movies end up being a little too cheerful for your tastes, then The Road is most surely the one for you. Based on quite possibly the most depressing book I've ever read, The Road sees a man and his son wandering through post-apocalypse America, very slowly dying as they go. It's to the director's credit that The Road manages to be as uplifting as it is. Especially when you consider that Cormac McCarthy's novel made me want to curl up and cry for a month. And also eat a lot. The Road really makes you appreciate food. Even spam.
The Man (Mortensen) and The Son (McPhee) are survivors of an unnamed, mostly unseen apocalypse. If this is how 2012 is gonna play out then I think I'd rather be dead, since it's a miserable world they live in. They're heading down the eponymous road to the Southern coastline, in the hope that the weather might be nicer and life a little less shitty. Mostly though, The Man is preparing The Son for life without him. He's ill see, and the crappy weather and lack of food really isn't helping matters. To make things worse, they're pursued by cannibal tribes (more subtly done than the likes of Doomsday might portray them) and beset by thieves and untrustworthy types. In flashbacks, we see Man and child's life before things went wrongwise. Before the youngster's birth, we see The Man with his missus - Charlize Theron, as it happens - and watch as she pops out the poor kiddo into their horrible world. Later still, we watch as they grow further apart and The Woman longs for death whilst The Man clings to hope. They're heartbreaking scenes, and it's horrible watching the pair grow apart.
Charlize Theron isn't the only surprising cameo you'll find in The Road, although you may not even notice the others at the time. Robert Duvall plays an old man, and Guy Pearce shows up too. But I was so engrossed in the story, that I truly didn't recognize either of them. It's Father and Son's journey, through and through. They may encounter others on their path, but this is only incidental. Cheesy as it may sound, this is a story of fatherly love.
And it's that sense of love that makes The Road so surprisingly uplifting. There was a real danger that the bleakness and gruesomeness of that world might overpower the characters' relationship, but Director John Hillcoat manages to make McCarthy's message of hope and love shine through it all. And it shines through in a way far less tacky than that cringeworthy sentence made it sound. Sure there's cannibalism and action and misery - lots and lots of misery - but it's The Man's protectiveness and The Son's unrelenting hope and capacity for good in spite of everything that manages to enthrall and captivate throughout.
The Road is a beautiful and haunting movie that truly does its literary origins justice. What with this and the Coens' No Country For Old Men, faithful Cormac McCarthy adaptations really are knocking 'em outta the post-apocalyptic, loony cowboy-filled park. They might not always make for the happiest of viewing, but they'll stick in the memory for a very long time afterwards.
Never judge a book by its cover. This one will make you LITERALLY SHIT YOURSELF 
