Film of the week: The End can get exhausting, but it’s also oddly gripping

Post-apocalyptic movies come in all shapes and sizes, but The End (12A), which was largely filmed in Ireland, pretty much defies categorisation.

Living half a mile down an abandoned salt mine, a wealthy family — Father (Michael Shannon), Mother (Tilda Swinton), and Son (George MacKay) — are determined to maintain the patrician values of their formerly dominant class, even if the world they once knew has been blown to hell.

Mother self-medicates her anxiety by constantly rearranging her classic art collection, Father dictates self-serving memoirs for a readership that no longer exists, while Son does his very best to pretend that their hermetically sealed life — which they share with Friend (Bronagh Gallagher), Doctor (Lennie James) and Butler (Tim McInnerny) — is absolutely normal and tickety-boo.

But when a young Girl (Moses Ingram) stumbles into their sanctuary and confronts the family with the first outsider they’ve encountered in 20 years, the doughty survivors are suddenly forced to reappraise the way the live, and who they have become.

Joshua Oppenheimer’s first film since 2014’s documentary The Look of Silence is, to put it mildly, an offbeat affair: the relationships are archly contrived, much of the dialogue is sung in a quasi-musical style, and the characters’ back stories are largely obscured, so that we only get fleeting glimpses of the traumas they expend a considerable amount of effort and energy in suppressing.

That can get exhausting, but it’s also oddly gripping; the situation is such that it’s only a matter of time before someone finally snaps and cuts loose. The vast network of tunnels encompasses a hydroponic garden, a swimming pool and — ominously — a shooting range.

The performances are strong, particularly those of Michael Shannon and Tilda Swinton, and Oppenheimer’s vision is brilliantly brought to life.

But be warned: two and half hours is a long time to spend trapped in a bunker with anyone, let alone this collection of warbling eccentrics.

Theatrical release

An Taibhse

★★★☆☆

Set in rural, post-Famine Ireland, An Taibhse (The Ghost) (16s) opens with Éamon (Tom Kerrisk) and his daughter Máire (Livvy Hill) arriving at a remote Big House, where they will serve as caretakers over the winter.

There are shades of The Shining, especially once we learn that Máire believes she has been pursued from Belfast by Alexander, a supernatural presence that has haunted her in the past.

But as Éamon and Máire settle into the eerie old house, it gradually becomes apparent that Alexander is not the only unnatural presence tormenting the vulnerable teenage girl.

Written and directed by John Farrelly, this Irish-language film is a bleakly Freudian nightmare, in which Máire and Éamon experience an increasingly fractured sense of reality as their inner turmoil manifests itself in terrifying visions of fire, crosses, and blood.

Elegantly framed by cinematographer Ross Power, and frequently filmed by candlelight, the story conveys an unsettling quality of creeping menace until the latter stages, when its genuinely chilling horror is overwhelmed by a sensory overload that eschews subtlety for bludgeoning special effects.

Theatrical release

The Woman in the Yard

★★☆☆☆

The Woman in the Yard (15A) stars Danielle Deadwyler as Ramona, who is at first perplexed, and then increasingly concerned for the safety of her children Taylor (Peyton Jackson) and Annie (Estella Kahiha), when a woman dressed all in black and heavily veiled takes a seat in the back yard of her isolated home.

Still crippled in the wake of the car accident that killed her husband David (Russell Hornsby), the largely helpless Ramona must find a way to defend her children against an aggressive apparition who insists that Ramona has “called her” into being …

Written by Sam Stefanak and directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, this latest offering from the Blumhouse Productions stable is a stodgy, half-baked confection that seeks to manufacture horror from a superficial understanding of guilt, depression, and despair.

Danielle Deadwyler’s undoubted talent is wasted here.

Theatrical release