The Quiet Earth

Directed by: Geoff Murphy
Written by: Bruno Lawrence, Sam Pillsbury and Bill Baer

This fascinating sci-fi picture asks questions about how you would deal with being alone on the earth. Starring the legendary Bruno Lawrence as Zac Hobson, it is an intimate portrait of a shattered psyche that succeeds despite there being a number of unanswered questions by the end.

Ironically, the event that has essentially wiped out life on planet Earth is Zac’s own invention. A project he has been working on results in a massive electrical pulse that obliterates everything living.

The first half of the film explores Zac’s solitude and the way it drives him slowly mad - he winds up in a pink petticoat running around a football field. Once other people show up (it turns out that if you were dying at the moment the pulse hit, you survived), they try to overcome their differences to work together. Zac’s scientific mind figures out that the pulse that destroyed the world may happen again soon, and if they manage to destroy the equipment in the lab, they may be able to save what’s left of the earth.