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Spanish Lady
- Any Spanish speakers want to fill us in on what she was saying?
“Thank God I found someone! I'm trying to get back to my home! I'm lost! I've been walking for a while! I need to use your phone! You're the first person I've seen all day! We have to get out of here!
I just saw a plane that was spraying red gas in the vicinity. I saw some deer, more than 50. They were coming out of the woods. Please! I need to go home, sir. A military plane appeared and fled. There's no one around! Is it a chemical attack?”
Propaganda flyer in Arabic
- Conversely to the above, any people who know Arabic who can tell what the flyer says?
Deer
- What was up with the deer and the flamingos?
- As the movie kind of lampshades, it's like when a dog knows when there's a storm about to hit. A vague mention of an ecological incident affecting migration patterns is overhead briefly on the radio. Possibly Rule of Symbolism too
- The deer are protecting a fawn inside the shack. Earlier in the movie when Archie and Rose go inside, Archie teases her by pointing out a pile of leaves with a depression in the middle and saying a creepy guy watches her there at night, but it looks exactly like a deer nest. They move their fawns often and leave them alone for long periods of time so as to not draw predators, explaining both why it's not there when Archie and Rose are and why the stag is aggressively protecting the shack from Amanda and Ruth.
- As the movie kind of lampshades, it's like when a dog knows when there's a storm about to hit. A vague mention of an ecological incident affecting migration patterns is overhead briefly on the radio. Possibly Rule of Symbolism too
Apocalypse Kitchen Sink
- No single explanation comfortably answers all questions raised through the film.
- The theory of hostile influence from another nation as suggested by G. H. comes close to being valid and is a disturbingly realistic look at a possible path to destabilizing a nation, but does nothing to explain the strange animal behavior or the bizarre illness the teenage boy is going through. As much as I liked a reworking of the message from ‘The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street’ it simply doesn't fully hold up to scrutiny.
- The Earth's magnetic poles flipping would explain the navigation irregularities for the machines and the animals, with some group in the know taking advantage and timing a cyber attack to exacerbate the problems. Planes and ships would not be able to reliably navigate and might run out of fuel. That’s not what we see, however. Even without magnetic navigation, a ship should see the shore and use their (still very much physical) rudder to steer before running aground. The plane we see crash still has engines running and seemed to deliberately crash rather than attempt to land.
- A solar flare or coronal mass ejection would play havoc with electronics in space and on the planet, potentially burning them out for good. And even though unshielded consumer electronics wouldn't fare any better, we still see lights turning on across the Earth's surface as night falls. It's also puzzling that the cell phones and iPad are simply without reliable networks rather than being burnt out.
- The strange animal behavior and bizarre illness could suggest some biological plague, but by definition that wouldn’t do anything to the electronics.
- The head-splittingly loud noise is unlikely to be a targeted weapon wielded by human forces. The power requirements would make such a weapon obvious to military forces while it was being set up. Focused sound beams are an experimental system in real life, but they affect one small location or vehicle, not several square miles. They’re definitely not microwaves as suggested by the survivalist as that would simply kill peoples at the intensity portrayed.
- One suggestion for the sound is that it's some kind of radiation, which is what caused the son to become ill. The bug bite makes better sense, but he likely wouldn't have those symptoms that fast from it. And the idea that he suffered the most because he didn't cover his ears fast enough doesn't explain why no one else got sick at all. Sound waves and radiation travel through our bodies, so they wouldn't be stopped by an extra inch of flesh over your eardrums.
The Plots lead to events of Alex Garland's Civil War
- Civil War (2024), where The Coup is showed in full blown.
