While the premise of setting a movie after some sort of world ending apocalypse has occurred is far from unique, Craig Zobel’s new film, Z for Zachariah, is able to separate itself from the pack a bit by telling a small story and keeping its focus squarely on character. The setting is a fertile valley on an Earth that has been otherwise ravaged by radioactivity. The setting is just the catalyst for the story though, not the focus of it. This isn’t a movie that’s all that interested in explaining why exactly the whole world went to shit, or why this particular valley was immune from the devastation, it’s just interested in putting a few characters in the middle of the situation and then exploring how the way they react to it speaks to the human condition.
The basic setup is that a farm girl named Ann (Margot Robbie) has always lived here, and she’s doing her duty as the last living member of her family to keep the farm going when she finds an explorer named Loomis (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who has wandered into her isolated little world. He’s the first person she’s seen in a really long time, and thanks to an understandable mishap he’s suffering from some pretty serious radiation poisoning when they meet, so being the trusting, down to earth farm girl she is, she takes him home and nurses him back to health, and after a period of time they predictably start to form a bond. Before they can consummate that bond in the way that adults do, however, a second figure from the outside world makes his way into the valley. His name is Caleb (Chris Pine), and while Loomis is a learned man of science who doesn’t have much room for religion or sentimentality, Caleb has a personality that seems to be much more copacetic with the way country girl Ann’s is on the surface. Perhaps predictably, tension both sexual and murderous then begins to be built.
The thing that works about Z for Zachariah is that it’s good at quickly but organically establishing its characters—who are all three-dimensional and complex without seeming ill-defined—so that once the conflict between them starts, you can anticipate how they’re going to react to each little perceived wrong that gets perpetrated against them, and part of you actually cares about how the interpersonal stuff is going to hash out. With the setup, you’d think that Loomis was going to be a straightforward protagonist, and that Caleb’s introduction would set off a pretty straightforward battle-for-the-girl story where the new guy was seen as an evil interloper, but each character has enough firmly established quirks and positive and negative traits that nothing is ever that simple or that boring. This is a movie that refuses to spoon feed things to the viewer and that leaves a lot to their interpretation, which works well to keep the relationship stuff interesting and was probably a necessity, because, honestly, this story is so small and focused that it wouldn’t have registered given another approach.
When a film is this focused on its characters and their interactions, it’s the acting that can either sink it or make it soar, and the frustrating reality here is that the acting is so middle of the road that the movie itself can’t really help but be middle of the road as well. Ejiofor is maybe the best working actor when it comes to registering things like pain and confusion while just using his face, so he does a great job as the character who walks out of hell and into heaven, only to find all of his newfound fortune almost immediately called into question, but his two co-stars are mostly just there.
Robbie proved that she was stunning in The Wolf of Wall Street, and she proved that she had enough charisma to contain a star quality in Focus, but this isn’t going to be the movie that proves she also has the dramatic chops to become a top actress. She’s fine, but she’s never really able to grab you emotionally, even when given charged monologues, and she never feels authentic playing a simple farm girl. Mostly, she feels like a supermodel playing dress up. It’s not that she doesn’t still have the potential to be a huge Hollywood star, it’s just that her future roles are clearly going to have to be better aimed toward her particular set of skills if she’s going to get there. Directors need to use her as the bright shining center of a film, not its relatable foundation.
Pine is an interesting case, as he’s been very hit or miss ever since he burst onto the scene with his lead role in the Star Trek reboot. When he’s playing a charismatic scoundrel like he is when he’s traveling though the cosmos as Captain Kirk, he’s fine, and when he’s being completely broad and weird like he was in his small role in Celeste & Jesse Forever or with his supporting role in Stretch, he can be great. Ask him to be a subdued or average character and he completely blends into the background though. In this movie he’s almost invisible. Wallpaper.
The reason the film as a whole still kind of works, even though it might not have been cast as well as it could have been, is that it’s able to maintain a feeling of dread and tension all of the way through, which keeps you engaged in where the story is going as it develops. Z for Zachariah is pretty much the definition of a slow burn, because things develop just slow enough to drive you crazy due to your wanting more, but they also burn just hot enough to keep you shifting in your seat with awkwardness. It’s difficult to maintain that balance, and this film does so nearly perfectly. If there were some sort of stakes greater than personal, relationship stuff going on, then one can’t help but feel like this movie would have been a lot better. As is, it’s engaging enough, but it feels pretty minor. That’s the risk it took though. Crank things up a few notches and you risk blending in with all of the other action-packed apocalypse movies that get released. Keep things small like this and you stand out but end up being bland. Making movies is hard.
