Ever Since the World Ended

This forgettable indie addition to the post-apocalyptic sci-fi genre takes place a dozen years after a viral plague has devastated mankind. San Francisco (population 186) is barely managing to hang on to the last remnants of civilization (kids still have piano lessons, surfer dudes goof off on the shores), but tensions arise when a former emergency worker-turned-pyromaniac returns to the city following an enforced six-year exile. The local leadership is in a quandary over whether to accept his insistence that he has given up the firebug habit. Filmmakers Calum Grant and Joshua Atesh Litle, clearly influenced by the faux-documentary style of The Blair Witch Project (shot two years before this film), frame Ever Since the World Ended as a video diary featuring interviews with the city's survivors, plus fly-on-the-wall observations as the plot unfolds. While the conceit clearly helps to camouflage the film's obvious lack of a special effects budget, the proceedings quickly become tiresome since the supposedly “real” characters featured here are guilty of the kind of hammy mugging found in bad home movies. And for a city that's supposedly been dead for 12 years, San Francisco looks as postcard-pretty here as always. Not recommended. (P. Hall)