The End We Start From – BFI London Film Festival 2023

Writer: Alice Birch and Megan Hunter

Director: Mahalia Belo

It never rains but it pours in the new BBC/BFI ecological thriller starring Jodie Comer as a mother with a newborn baby battling destructive floods in Britain. Taking its cue from TV programmes such as Threads and The Walking Dead and novels like The Day of the Triffids and The War of the Worlds, Mahalia Belo’s film treads very familiar territory. The apocalypse has never looked so wet.

Comer’s character – no one has names in this film apart from the baby – is pregnant and it’s raining outside her fancy London home. It doesn’t stop raining and when water begins to seep underneath the front door, her own waters break. With the ambulance service overwhelmed because of the floods, it’s not certain that she’ll make it to hospital in time.

She does, although her partner played by Joel Fry misses the birth. “Did it really hurt?” he asks. He jokingly suggests that they call their new boy Noah, but they settle on Jeb. Their home is under water and so they set off for her in-law’s house located in a village on high ground. It takes some time to get there. There’s traffic, roadblocks and rain. It keeps on raining.

At first, life in this remote village is peaceful and Fry’s mother has been hoarding food for years in case a situation like this ever occurred. She shares her bounty with the rest of the villagers, but when the shelves become bare the film, based on Megan Hunter’s novel, takes a few grim turns. Indeed, it seems as if we’re heading into Threads country, the BBC TV survival horror that gave nightmares to a whole generation in 1984. And as mother and baby move from rural shelter to island commune, there are echoes of The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later albeit without the zombies.

The American series delighted in gore but here adaptor (and playwright) Alice Birch keeps all the violence off the screen like a Greek tragedy. People return to the story sporting bruises and cuts while bloodstained blankets and the sound of gunshots are the only clues to off-screen deaths. This version of the end of the world is a very tasteful one.

Unexpectedly, Comer puts in a stellar performance but it’s Katherine Waterston, as the friend she meets in the shelter, who steals the show. Waterston’s character has a dry sense of humour, laughing at the fact that her ex-boyfriend may have died because he never learnt how to swim. The relationship between Comer and Waterston’s characters – both new mothers with babies strapped to their chests – is the best part of the film and their friendship is never portrayed in a sentimental way. Waterston’s character, more complex than Comer’s, feels real.

There are short cameos too by Benedict Cumberbatch, Gina McKee and Mark Strong. It’s definitely a starry cast, but these famous faces distract rather than add any new layers to the story. While Cumberbatch is very earnest, Strong has little to do. It’s only McKee who has something of a character to work with. There are some haunting shots of London half-submerged, but this spectacle comes too late in the film. Some unnecessary flashbacks also hinder the action.

The End We Start From is not entirely a damp squib and it bobs along quite nicely. But its waters are not deep.

The End We Start From is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2023.