Ever After (2018)

Carolina Hellsgård's chilling second feature follows two women fighting for their lives in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by zombies - a future Hellsgård presents as both horrific and hopeful.

With women in every major creative role, ENDZEIT is a different kind of zombie movie. Set in a terrifying near-future zombie apocalypse, Carolina Hellsgård's sophomore feature is chilling and doomladen, but it's also a transfixing, gorgeous, and unusually intimate sort-of-road movie - in which humanity comes to its end and nature is reclaiming its terrain ,

A plague has swept the world. Weimar and Jura, the only surviving cities, have very different approaches to the epidemic. In Weimar, Vivi (Gro Swantje Kohlhof) - vulnerable and numb as a result of apocalypse-triggered tragedies - reluctantly volunteers at the city's perimeter. It is at the ramshackle outer fences, demanding constant defense from attacks by infectious cannibal revenants, that she meets Eva (Maja teacher) - whose icy stoicism makes a striking contrast to Vivi's delicate fragility. Following an attack at their post, they are looking for a Jena-based approach to Jena, whose approach to the victims of the epidemic offers some hope for the future. When the train is broken down, Vivi and Eva are left to fall in love with each other.

With its pulse-pounding confrontations, END TIME absolutely delivers as horror, but with a distinct and refreshing perspective. It poses existential questions about our world.

Trine Dyrholm (Love is All You Need, Nico, 1988), ENDZEIT suggests there is things worse than civilization's collapse. Vivi takes on the consolation in the stars, which shine more brightly than they had before the disaster. It's the end of the world as we know it - and it feels fine.