AFI FEST Los Angeles International Film Festival 2009

After an unspecified calamity, the world has been destroyed, leaving nothing but shells of cities—and the road. A father and son walk through an ash-grey landscape, surrounded by death, ducking the ever-present, terrifying threat posed by other survivors. One of the year’s most highly anticipated films, this astonishing adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel strips away the pretension and artifice of science fiction-style apocalypse, presenting a story about simple survival: a waiting game played by a father who loves his son. The fidelity with which John Hillcoat brings the end of the world to the screen is a wonder to behold.

–Lane Kneedler