The End We Start From film review — smart eco-thriller has mainstream oomph

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In Children of Men, Alfonso Cuarón’s haunting account of a bleak future, the UK appeared the last domino upright amid global catastrophe. (“Britain stands alone!”) New survival thriller The End We Start From flips that script from the start. Now, the country seems the one place gripped by a disaster that might once have passed for a joke about national summers: so much rain for so long that vast swathes of the British Isles flood. 

And where Cuarón foresaw a birth rate dropped to zero, Mahalia Belo’s impressive debut upends that premise too. Instead, our heroine is an ordinary young woman, unnamed and played by Jodie Comer, whom we meet in London heavily pregnant. Her waters shortly break in time with Britain’s. From there, mother and child must navigate a long stampede for higher ground, amid mounting panic and abandoned niceties.

Belo made a name for herself more than a decade ago as a talented director of short films; since then, she has mostly worked in high-end TV. That long run-up might explain the poise of her work here. The film has cinematic scale and a miss-nothing eye for detail. But others are also on good form. To say Alice Birch’s script is queasy is a compliment. Adapted from Megan Hunter’s 2017 novel, the lurch the flood delivers through grim new normals feels horribly plausible.

And then there is Comer. Though her role has no name, the actress gives the part such nuance and presence, we instantly see her in three vivid dimensions. (There is also solid support from Joel Fry, and a fine, offbeat turn from Katherine Waterston, lugging another papoose.) 

The result is the kind of film the UK rarely makes anymore: a clever, propulsive picture with enough mainstream oomph for multiplexes. Like Comer’s character, it often has choices to make about just how dark to get. In common with her too, it works hard to hold on to optimism.

★★★★☆

In UK cinemas from January 19