‘The End’ review: Tilda Swinton sings of delusion in apocalypse musical

Among the most polarizing of the films shown at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival was The End, a two-and-a-half-hour musical about humanity’s last days on Earth. 

Far from the show-stopping spectacle of apocalyptic action films like The Day After Tomorrow or even the razzmatazz of modern American movie musicals like The Greatest Showman, director Joshua Oppenheimer embeds his audience in a bizarre bunker a half-mile underground. There lives a wealthy industrialist family who has turned a blind eye to the dying world above them. That is, until a survivor finds her way to their doorstep. Will her unexpected arrival upset their delicate psychological equilibrium? You bet.

What follows is certainly not for everyone. Some critics I spoke with at TIFF complained that Oppenheimer’s musical is indulgent in its runtime, ugly in its relentless blue-gray palette, and even infuriating in its plotting. Others see the length, the dismal colors, and that frustrating plot to be precisely the point, and embrace it as such. I am in the latter camp, finding this mournful and fanciful musical utterly captivating, jarringly funny, and savagely profound. 

The End is doomsday prepping by way of Downton Abbey.

Forget what you think you know about bunkers. Deep, deep underground this family — whose names are never uttered — has built something not metal and cold but very old-money. Housed within a cavernous salt mine with spiraling walls and noisy ventilation systems lies their home away from apocalypse. It contains crown molding, classic works of art in gilded frames, a wood-paneled library, a grand dining room, a complicated model train set-up, an inexplicably endless food supply, and above all, pristine order down to the paper-flower bouquets arranged in delicate vases.

Here, a 25-year-old man born in the bunker (George MacKay) has only ever known his doting mother (Tilda Swinton), his chummy father (Michael Shanon), their devoted butler (Tim McInnerny), a cheeky chef (Bronagh Gallagher), and a dour doctor (Lennie James). And despite possibly being the last people on Earth, they seem happy enough, singing songs of gratitude for their circumstances. Well, when they’re not conducting dramatic emergency drills, that is. (You can never be too careful.)

The absurdity of their profound privilege is made all the clearer when an above-ground survivor (Moses Ingram) stumbles upon them. Understandably, she is utterly bewildered by all they possess while people on the surface scrape and starve. The political commentary only gets more overt as this young Black woman hears the selective history the white son’s been taught, like how the oil industry that made its fortune definitely didn’t contribute to the climate crisis that forced the family underground as they left everyone else to burn! With a cocked eyebrow and a patient tone, she not only pushes back on this propaganda but also brings a dry humor to the household. 

The End offers a bleak view with winsome song and dance.

While the son is in awe of the stranger, who speaks openly about her own regrets and urges the others to do the same, a raw tension emerges between her and the mother, who would rather the family’s skeletons stay neatly tucked away in the closet, thank you very much. Anxieties rise as a romance blooms between the son and the stranger. Happily for us, this leads to a charming duet and a dance number where salt is kicked about the mines, which sit cold and unimpressed by the pair’s passion. Such energy surrounded by the towering, uncaring setting echoes West Side Story. But with nowhere to escape but a dying world above, where can this story go? 

Oppenheimer and co-writer Rasmus Heisterberg mire the audience in the push-and-pull between the mother’s strategic repression and the stranger’s emotional outbursts. Reflecting her character’s emotional strain, Swinton sings in a shrill falsetto, as if her mother might crack at any moment. MacKay has a Broadway-bright performance style, while Ingram delivers soulful ballads of loss and hope. Shannon and McInnerny join in with vaguely vaudevillian numbers of tap and banter, but the jocularity of this bit is undercut by the father cruelly reminding his butler buddy of his rank.

‘The End’ traps us in a ruthless loop, where its core family risks change or growth, only to deny it.

Trapped in this beautiful bunker under unblinking blue light, they are all specimens trapped under glass. Here are the last people on Earth, preserved but without purpose, objects in a museum of their own making. Still, there are moments where it seems these characters might just break out — not of the bunker but from the pretty molds they’ve built to survive in the guise of civility. A brutal verbal battle in the parents’ bathroom gives Shannon’s signature intensity a place to explode. Swinton’s eyes, bright and on the brink of tears, show the deep hurt hiding behind this mother’s practiced smile. MacKay, with a frantic enthusiasm that trembles into nerve-rattling, seems often on the brink of breaking this cycle of deranged self-mythologizing. But then Oppenheimer will quick-cut to some time later, when the drama has passed and routine has reasserted itself. The tension is bled out, and we bleed with it.

The End traps us in a ruthless loop, where its core family risks change or growth, only to deny it. Both those who liked and loathed the film agree this cycle makes for a very frustrating viewing experience. But this feels intentional. As he did in his two Oscar–nominated documentaries, The Look of Silence and The Act of Killing, Oppenheimer is itching his way under our skin with incredible artistry to expose the revolting reality of human capabilities — not just what horrors we can do to each other, but also what we can ignore to maintain even a fragile sense of civility. 

In The End, even as the director presents us with people who have done horrible things, Oppenheimer doesn’t lose empathy for them. While their lies are abundant, this incredible cast makes their pain feel real, so even in spite of our vexations or political opinions, you might well ache for the mother who fears she’s losing her son. And yet — as absurd as this sounds — the most devastating line in the whole movie is about cake. Literal cake. 

Defying expectations of genre, both musical and apocalypse narrative, The End is a challenge thrown down to audiences. The songs and dances are not glistening perfection, but occasionally clunky or tinny. But this works because each instance is a reflection of that character, and where they fall short of their projection of perfection and happiness. The suffocatingly dull colors bleach the rosiness out of flushed cheeks, making everything feel vaguely dead, or maybe even embalmed. The film’s plot leads to a place that is well earned and yet hard to bear. Yet it’s thrilling to see a musical take so many risks, especially when movie studios seem afraid to even promote that a movie is a musical. (See trailers for Mean Girls, Wonka, and Wicked, all of which hide the actual singing.) Frankly, it was refreshing to be this surprised and emotionally wrecked by a new musical. 

All in all, The End is a gutsy film that is thrillingly unnerving, raw, and original. 

The End was reviewed out of its Canadian premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. It opens in limited release Dec. 6.