Survival Movie Review: GoodBye World

Goodbye World is not a very good movie (IMDb rating 5.5/10) but if you can catch it on Netflix or elsewhere its not that awful either. Dont expect much action or shooting in spite of the epic looking cover, there's practically none of it.

While there’s lots to be desired in terms of movie quality, most of all the script and bland story development, there are a few points worth noticing about how the group fares after the world seems to officially end :

1)People are all different and there’s some friction between the different character, given their personal views.  Even in a hand-picked survivalist group you would see far worse conflict and clashes of personalities, some of it violent even. Keep in mind that most homicides are perpetrated by family or friends.

2)Other than the little girl, we're looking at a group of young, fit, healthy and overall smart people. If you pick ten random people from society, from any country, you wont be that lucky. In spite of the overall liberal/hippie mentality of the group, you have a "prepper/self reliant type", a tech guy, a gov. official with insiders knowledge who also happens to be an eagle scout.

3)The bearded character has a house with plenty of supplies, solar, well, etc. The weak spot being his anti-gun mentality, other than that he's got a nice amount of supplies. Granted, safety is a key priority, but he’s still better prepared than most. Benjamin (conspiracy guy) actually carries around as EDC a Leatherman Wave. That alone makes him better prepared than 99% of people out there.

4)The “no one will bother us so far up the hill” mentality proves to be wrong, as it would in reality, and the same lady that sells items at pre-SHTF prices to her neighbor because she says she wouldn’t take advantage of the situation, a few days later she’s along with the group that is willing to steal medicines and supplies from that same neighbor. That’s a good message right there. You may think everyone will play nice because they do so now, but when desperate enough even your long time good neighbors will come after you.

5)The self-reliant, salt of the earth country guy living down the road is actually all about cooking meth. Again, feel-good idea about all country people being good and everyone from the city being evil and lazy just isn’t true. You’ve got all sorts of people in different places. Meth labs and pot farms are more often than not found in the country.

6) While some may frown at the use drugs and heavy drinking, it is part of society and a lot of people do so or worse. There’s plenty of people out there that are just as addicted to prescription drugs. Drug abuse of legal or illegal drugs will become a problem for a lot of people after SHTF.

7)There’s some promiscuous behavior in the movie, again, much worse happens in the real world. At least the girl sleeping around was clearly more than twenty years old. Plenty of girls do much worse and aren’t even old enough to drive. With social collapse, expect moral collapse as well.

8)Safety concerns are greatly underestimated and in the movie, it was very much PG-13 safe. In reality what would have happened during the first encounter with “hostiles” would have been far worse than that. Its very naïve to think that quoting the constitution magically stops a couple sociopaths with ARs. 

9)At the end the message that we all have to work together is a positive one, and I agree that no man (or group) is an island. Reality shows us time and again that a man alone or even survivalist groups, no matter how tactical they think they are, have 0 chance of long term success when surrounded by a hostiles. You can win a fight or two, but shooting raiders and living to fight another day is no long (or medium) term solution.

10)The eco-friendly prepper/self-reliant guy suffers the lack of defensive preparations, as it would happen in the real world (again, watered down compared to how it would happen in reality)

Overall an average movie that shows a few interesting aspects about group survival, even if it’s a PG-13 version of what would happen for real, where violence would have been worse than rated R. 

FerFAL