Apocalypse (pt. II)

Sunshine

Night of the Comet

Well, dear readers, we’ve made it to the end of another year. 2023 was a fever dream with ups like great movies and downs like Timothée Chalamet and Kyl*e J*nner dating. As usual, I’m spending the last remaining days of this year wallowing in existential dread and the impossible expectations of an impending new year, but I’ve also been watching a LOT of movies—even for me. I’ve still got a good chunk of 2023 releases left to watch but I always have time for my double features, especially when they belong to one of my favorite genres: apocalypse movies. Somehow, I’ve only done one apocalypse double feature previously, even though the subject has been tiptoed around in many a film I’ve watched, I was ready for another proper apocalypse movie night and the end of the year seems like the perfect time. In the dead zone between Christmas and New Years, in the suburban nightmare we find ourselves returning to when we see our families, there is nothing to do but luxuriate in the languor and pop on a movie or two. Both of tonight’s apocalypse features march to the beat of their own dystopian rhythm, and showcase different forms of humanity’s destruction. I began with an apocalypse film that I’ve been wanting to watch for far too long from Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, the directing and writing duo of 28 Days Later, the 2007 film Sunshine. Sunshine takes place not post-apocalypse like many apocalypse films, but pre-apocalypse, just before complete and utter decimation. It transports us to the not-so-distant future of 2057, where the Sun is dying and Earth is freezing. After a failed mission to “restart” the Sun by a spaceship and crew called Icarus, eight new scientists, physicists, and biologists venture out in their craft, Icarus II, armed with a bomb that they hope will be strong enough to create a star within a dying star—to create a new Sun and save Earth. This crew is compiled of one of the most stacked casts to ever travel to space together—Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh, Rose Byrne, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong, and Mark Strong—but no amount of star power can protect this crew from the most powerful dying star in the universe. On their mission they receive a distress signal from the lost Icarus I (seven years after their communications went dark) and as if this weren’t troubling enough already, their ship begins to face several malfunctions that result in a severe loss of oxygen. In order to complete their mission, and return home safely, the crew of the Icarus II has no choice but to dock with the Icarus I, and raid them of their oxygen and other supplies. When they reach the inside of this ghost ship—oxygen in tact, food still stocked, all operations functioning normally—our international space crew begins to wonder what could’ve possibly caused this previous crew to not complete their mission. Much like in Event Horizon, the crew in Sunshine have more to worry about than just aliens, more to look out for than just run-of-the-mill space isolation, for the possibilities of what exists out there in the dark corners of space are too vast and frightening for our earthbound minds to comprehend. I shan’t spoil Sunshine’s secrets, of which it has many, but I will tell you that the amount of competition-and-anxiety-fueled sexual tension between the scientists onboard this spacecraft far outweighs any sexual tension in Oppenheimer—another time Cillian Murphy plays an ambitious physicist. I thoroughly enjoyed Sunshine for its creative and chaotic choices, including, but not limited to, Chris Evans in unrecognizably long hair and a mustache, and Michelle Yeoh running around a spaceship in Birkenstocks. The making of this film sounds utterly insane, between the forced method acting and deep space deprivation simulations by order of director Danny Boyle, and the fact that Cillian Murphy cites this film as the reason why he switched from agnosticism to atheism, I can only imagine how wild this entire filming process was. And as dazzling as this pretty cast was to look at as they rocketed toward their likely doom, it was also somewhat of a bummer, so I was in need of a more uplifting apocalypse movie. Thankfully I found the 1984 cult-classic apocalyptic comedy film by Thom Eberhardt, Night of the Comet. Night of the Comet is set in the then-present day 1984, eleven days before Christmas, where the city of Los Angeles—and the whole world—is preparing for a momentous occasion. The Earth is set to pass through the tail of a comet—an event that last occurred 65 million years ago and coincided with the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs—and every man, woman, and child is gathering outside to bear witness to this rare event. Except for just a handful of people, like 18 year old Regina “Reggie” Belmont (Catherine Mary Stewart), a movie theater employee who spends her evening hooking up with a boy inside the projection room. The next day, this boy leaves Reggie behind and disappears. And when Reggie emerges from the projection room and steps outside of the theater, she finds that everyone is just… gone. Where each person stood to watch the comet, all that remains is their clothing, shoes, and a pile of red dust. It would appear that every single person who looked at the comet was vaporized into scarlet oblivion, and anyone who was nearby but only slightly exposed to its light, is transformed into a zombie. After Reggie fights off the zombie that killed her boy toy, she steals her boy toy’s motorcycle and takes off into the red-tinted morning, looking for any signs of life. But all she finds are empty streets, traffic-less freeways, quiet, creepy, nothing. When Reggie arrives at home, her evil stepmom is nowhere to be found—or rather, what’s left of her is in a pile of dust outside next to the pile of dust she was having an affair with—but she does find her younger sister Sam (Kelli Maroney.) Sam is just trying to get ready for pep squad, bummed out that she missed the comet, and confused why none of her fellow squad members are answering the phone. Reggie explains the situation and the two sisters are at a loss for what to do exactly—until they hear the voice of a DJ from their radio. They drive to the radio station but find no host there, only a prerecorded voiceover, and a handsome stranger named Hector (played by Robert Beltran of Eating Raoul fame.) Hector was just a truck driver passing through town, and because he spent the night in the back of his 18-wheeler, he survived the comet. They try to use the radio to contact other stations, but to no avail, and Sam asks “Do you think this is happening everywhere? Like, even in Burbank?” The three decide to stick together out of desperation, and the fact that Hector is pretty cute—despite his lack of flirtation with either sister. Prompting Sam to say to Reggie “The last man on Earth is either a gentleman, or a f*g” with a confidence that could only be found in the good ole, slur-spouting 1980s. Unbeknownst to this cute trucker and sister duo of valley girls, there are other survivors who heard their radio call, and when they all rendezvous, nothing good can come of it. It’s up to Reggie, Sam, and Hector to survive their post apocalypse—through isolation and zombies and crazy non-zombie humans that say things like “I’m not crazy, I just don’t give a fuck!” Night of the Comet is a fun, silly, yet genuinely suspenseful movie that pokes just as much fun at its girly girl final girls as it does all of humanity. The end of the world can often be depressing and daunting, but Night of the Comet was injected with all of the camp, humor, and musical montage magic that the 1980s had to offer. And while Reggie and Sam have some airhead tendencies, Night of the Comet was smart enough to know that in the face of the apocalypse, or any danger for that matter, women can do anything—like kicking some zombie and crazed-human ass. (And believe it or not, its these specific tough valley girls that inspired the character of Buffy Summers in Buffy the Vampire Slayer!) It’s this critic’s opinion that both of these apocalypse films lived up to their hype, and while I generally feel numb or sleepy or even sad during this liminal space between holidays, this double apocalyptic feature actually put a smile on my face. Thank you, dear reader, for following along with me for another year of film criticism, pop culture rambling, and cinematic shit-talking. I hope you have a happy new year and I hope you’ll keep watching movies with me in 2024!!!! 💋