Article by Rosie Eden-Ellis

Based on the best selling book by Cormac McCarthy, ‘The Road’ offers a bleak rendering of a post-apocalyptic world where humans hunt in packs to survive and only the fittest survive. Billed only as ‘Man’ and ‘Boy’, Vigo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee portray the father / son travelers forging their way down the deserted roads of North America, making their way south through harsh conditions with only a pistol and two bullets, hoping to reach safety

‘The Road’ is an often-disturbing mediation on the nature of desperation in humans and forces us to ask the questions; what would we do to survive and to protect our loved ones? In one particularly harrowing scene the man and boy enter an isolated yet beautiful country home to discover it has been taken over by a gang of cannibals who are harvesting humans in a dank cellar below. Though the terror and disgust of our protagonists is plain, there is a lurking sense of the ominous, we are never quite sure what lengths they would go to in order to stay alive.

Your browser may not support display of this image. The horror is, however, down played and the real core of the story is the touching relationship between father and son, with two note perfect performances from Mortensen and Smit-McPhee who manage to convincingly portray an intense loving bond with subtlety and maturity. The poignancy of their loss reverberates through the isolated wilderness of the eponymous road with the use of beautifully stark cinematography, complimented by sparse use of CGI and a haunting, original score by Nick Cave.

An interesting and beautifully made film, with an original twist on the genre I would highly recommend ‘The Road’, it will stay with you long after you have left the cinema.

If you enjoyed ‘The Road’ I would recommend checking out the following films:

Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006)

I am Legend (Francis Lawrence, 2007)

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (George Miller, 1981)