Blackout

I read a lot of the reviews and a lot of people say how unlikely things will go that badly that fast and I ask you this: Do you know how to hunt? How to dress and butcher an animal? Do you know how to grow food? Do you know what wild plants are edible and which are poisonous? If the lights went out how much food do you actually have at your house? This scenario isn't that farfetched, cyber attacks or sabotage could create this outcome. An even more devastating outcome would be an EMP or a CME (coronal mass ejection) in which case as stated in the film all technology in the affected area is toast. When you have a nation of people who only know supermarkets and fast food chains this movie is the result. Things WILL get nasty. Civilization will disappear. The predators will eat the prey. These are the facts. To those who think a community would band together, I say your naiveté will get you and those you love killed. This movie is a cautionary tale of how dependent we as a nation are on technology. My only complaint with this movie is how woefully unprepared the "prepper" was in terms of firearms. The AR-15 is America's rifle and the fact he didn't have even one is kind of ridiculous although it would make the climax far more anti-climatic. The bottom line is Evil will prevail when good men do nothing. Regardless of your politics, you owe it to your family and those that you love to have some long term food storage and a means to protect yourself (i.e firearms). Call it an insurance policy or whatever, it is an investment and the people that you love are worth it. Buy one, get trained, continue to train, it saves lives. I really liked this film and I recommend it to everyone. After you have watched it you should consider what exactly you would do in that situation? A solar flare occurred in the 1800s that caused the aurora borealis to be seen as far south as Cuba an event like that would cause all current cars to cease functioning, all cellphones, all devices that have any kind of sophisticated microchip would be fried and you would be for all intents and purposes back in the stone age. Just ponder on that scenario. Watch the film. You wont be disappointed.

Considering that most movies in the apocalyptic genre are pure dreck, this was a pretty good film. It was a solid 3-star, for sure. Get rid of the college kid backpackers (at least earlier in the movie) and it'd be closer to 4 stars, for this genre. I live in a major metropolitan area, grew up in a rural western town 60 miles outside a major city and find this film's plot plausible. Americans are unaccustomed to missing any meals, let alone going hungry for days. Ever been in a U.S. east coast city when a snowstorm is forecast? The supermarkets are besieged based just on forecasts of inclement weather. Those reviewers citing their own experience with local power outages are missing a major plot point: most of if not the the entire country clearly has lost power (learned via ham radio) and maybe the world, so it'd be remarkable if there was not mass panic. Without running water, sewer and food, social order in cities would breakdown quickly and residents would leave in desperation. This movie was apparently set in Massachusetts, close to the most densely populated corridor in the U.S. I thought the ending was pretty good, too. Early in the movie, at the town hall meeting, it is made clear what the impetus for the blackout was -- a scenario that America's policymakers and power company executives have done far too little to prevent. Our civilization hangs by a very thread and when this film snips that thread, it gets interesting quickly.

Today it's an EMP attack, used to be a Zombie Apocalypse, before that it was Monsters on due on Maple Street...they all record their view of the collapse of civilization at the drop of a hat...it's intriguing, it's scary, and people convince themselves it's possible, so it's good entertainment that relies on the basic nature of humans.This movie is great IMHO - good acting, good settings, scary, and you can convince yourself it's possible - like most fiction, you can come up with a lot of holes in the movies, but that's part of the fun so the Preppers and Zombie Fighters can feel better about how their supposed expert skills are going to keep them safe in a crisis. I liked that they took out some key players fairly quickly and you have to appreciate that since ostensibly no one is safe. I'm not at all clear on why one guy was a Prepper and they kept showing a video of his wife, they're unrelated and unexplained, but whatever, it is a fun movie, the kind where you say "Don't do it!" or "Why did you do that!". For the money (free on Amazon Prime) it's one of the better B movies I've seen in a long time. Good entertainment.