Most end-of-the-world movies arrive with screaming sirens and CGI debris. Last Night, Don McKellar’s 1998 directorial debut, does the opposite. It begins six hours before the apocalypse and never raises its voice. There’s no countdown timer, no panicked news anchor explaining the science. Something — a meteor, a comet, a gamma-ray burst, take your pick — is bearing down on Earth, glowing in the sky like a second sun. The whole film is set at night yet lit like high noon. That’s about as much explanation as you get, and it’s all you need.
Quick housekeeping. This is not the 2010 Last Night with Keira Knightley. And it’s only obscure if you live outside Canada, where it remains one of the country’s most celebrated independent films. The cast reads like a future hall of fame: Sandra Oh, Callum Keith Rennie, Sarah Polley, Geneviève Bujold, and director David Cronenberg in front of the camera for once.
One more warning: Wikipedia files this under black comedy, which sets up expectations the film politely ignores. There are laughs, but it lands as a bleak, bittersweet drama — the kind you have to sit with for a while after the credits.
The story tracks several Torontonians sorting out what to do with their final hours. The apocalypse has been public knowledge long enough that most people have cycled through the stages of grief and settled into a strange, depressed calm. The riots have already burned themselves out. Some are racing through bucket lists, some have gathered with family, and some are treating the end like an especially committed New Year’s Eve.
Into this drifts Patrick (McKellar), who wants nothing more than to be alone at the end, and Sandra (Oh), stranded across town after vandals trash her car. She’s desperate to get back to her husband Duncan (Cronenberg); Patrick isn’t quite miserable enough to send her away. Their trek across a thinning, half-abandoned city forms the spine of the film — though calling it a road movie misses the point.
Patrick and Sandra function less as heroes than as audience surrogates, our eyes on a Toronto slowly emptying out as the people who keep a city running decide they have better things to do. The tone is closer to documentary than thriller, chronicling the apocalypse from one specific place and moment. The characters they meet range from the ridiculous to the sublime — some know exactly how they want to spend their last night, others are frozen by the sheer weight of the choice.
The obvious modern comparison is Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, and the fact that most films in this vein lean comic probably explains why Last Night keeps getting mislabeled as one. It isn’t. It’s a strange, lingering trip through the beginning of the end, and it’s guaranteed to leave you with at least one scene that won’t let go. Give it a night on Prime Video.
