In the 12 years of scrounging since everyone they loved died and society collapsed, nobody really seems to have changed that much. When they aren't having dinner parties, surfing or smoking weed, they look like they have been.The improvised dialogue is more about what the actors think of our present society than a convincing picture of a future one. The woman who wants to have a child and raise it on her own is particularly ridiculous. Who in their right mind would seek to become a single parent in a world with no reliable medical care or food supply? The movie actually improves quite a bit in the last 30 minutes. The cinematography gets better, the acting gets better, and there is finally some tension and plot connected to the setting.Then the movie ends.

So a plague hits San Francisco (and presumably the rest of the USA &/or world??), and 10-12 years later only 186-200 people survive in the Bay area. The punchline: the survivors shown (about 40) in a "documentary" being made by a couple other fellow survivors, all wear polished haircuts; makeup; clean, fashionable clothes; clean-shaved faces, or perfectly groomed goatees and soul patches. Judging by their diction, they almost all sound like they wandered off a college campus or out of a coffee house. The man who is supposed to be menacing to the documentary makers when they enter his property, swings a hammer and grunts, but it just looks like a random clean-cut person pretending to be threatening. The houses shown are freshly painted, the streets have no vegetation popping through cracks, and the only sign of oddity is a shot of the Golden Gate Bridge looking sort of dilapidated. People seem minimally traumatized, there's no explanation of how the plague disappeared or how it was caused or how likely it would be to return. The current generation of kids is happy to live in a quiet peaceful world, there are plenty of supplies left in the huge city so sparsely populated, city water will last at least 20 more years, as will some backup generators and solar panels. Surfer-looking dudes fish and talk about getting back to the land by hunting. Pot is smoked freely. Kids are taught lessons in renaissance art while sitting cross-legged in a circle on a floor in a sparkling clean room. A well-mannered white-haired woman houses a small commune in her large home on a hill, where they eat salad and fresh bread at dinner. Trouble only strikes when a jaded emergency worker who once burned peoples homes, returns to town. He's shot off-camera and people are relieved. Some other anonymous shooter wounds one of the pot-smoking documentary makers when he and others venture out of city limits. He's mercy-killed by one of the friends and no mourning is shown. Um, DUDES? There was a PLAGUE!!!! It killed millions!!!! There's hardly anybody around except corpses!!!! Since when would you have time to teach art? Or keep your house freshly painted? Or put on makeup? Or lounge around smoking weed? Where would you even get fresh makeup? Or such clean, fashionable clothes? Who's doing your hair??? Wouldn't you all be too busy growing the veggies and baking the bread you're eating in your Pier One decorated living room? I'm all for utopia, I'm all for a movie about a utopia, but perhaps this plague wasn't the best premise to use as foundation for how great the world would be with less people. And if the real-life film makers did want to show the flip-side of this utopia, they wouldn't even have needed a bigger budget. Just scout locations for run-down houses, and tell your actors to cut each other's hair for a few months as opposed to getting professional haircuts. Especially the actor who was supposed to be living in the woods, camping in the forest canopy -- unseen by his friends for years. You might want to tell him not to wash his freshly bleached clothing for a few months, and ditch the soul patch.

This is a good movie and well made. I appreciate the fact that it is a real sci fi and doesn't rely on high priced effects to get its point across. However... It does bother me that with only 180some people left in a city the size of San Francisco, they have no gasoline to run cars or even motorcycles with. It also bothers me that people protect themselves with an occasional hammer or baseball bat. This seems an affectation of the filmmakers dislike for firearms and unrealistic. Also, the lack of leadership and some sort of coordinated effort to supply the needs of the survivors as well as preserve some of the essentials to prevent the fall back into barbarism is unrealistic. I am a peace-loving old hippie who lives in San Francisco but I am not an idiot, as many of the characters in this film appear to be. I think it says more about San Franciscans from the filmmakers point of view than what would really happen at the end of the world.

ESTWE is presented as a documentary / video diary, interviewing those few people left on earth who didn't die of a plague-like virus. Rather than going the usual sci-fi route and dwelling on apocalyptic scenes, we get interviews with people who have adapted and who are trying to maintain communities and build a future for their children.The aspects which I found absolutely fascinating are:The ways in which a community agonises over a dangerous neighbour; some wanting harsh justice, others demanding more humanitarian means but not sure what to do or who has the right to judge..The children (becoming adults - now in their mid/late teens) who never knew the 'old' world; believing their parents are wrong to try and live in the past, and that they have a purer understanding of how to live in 'their' new world..The 'human' need for society; those with a need for community/rules/stability; those who prefer to defy convention and live in moderate isolation (a very poignant moment when the beach pot-heads tell us how they've each been planning what the other one should do if he should die); and the lone individuals who worry everyone else and (in a few cases) become quite dangerous.Within the communities, the very real sense that procreation is something that suddenly needs to be planned properly, and taken very seriously - from a healthy-genetic-pool point of view, as well as very serious medical considerations (in fact, there is a sad moment when you realise that something as simple as a gum-infection could kill you)..And the idea that the only transportation is by foot, or by bicycle (further isolating communities) - with travellers under threat from lone 'wierdos' who may take pot-shots at anyone coming into their territory..It should also be noted that apart from (obviously) wondering how you would cope in that situation, you also begin to imagine how much better your quality of life would be without the 21st Century rat-race, 'conveniences' and other distractions. I certainly did. It's a well made, extremely thought-provoking film (slow at times, but not in a bad way), and really is pure sci-fi.I would encourage anyone and everyone to see it, in the hope that it will broaden your horizons and make you look at your entire life, relationships and society in a completely different light. I would also put it on school curriculums.