Most apocalyptic thrillers exist in large measure for the sizzle, or are at least invested in paying off some fantastical doomsday conceit. But Goodbye World, in which a group of old college friends and lovers of the idealistic and liberal persuasion find shelter at a remote country cabin in the days and weeks after a crippling cyber-attack, is something quite different. An unusual hybrid of The Big Chill, The Trigger Effect and Into the Wild, director Denis Henry Hennelly’s film exists largely apart from the investigation of cause, arguments about culpability or even the trials of survival. It’s kind of an incidental apocalyptic drama. So if the movie unravels in the manner in which it pays off and resolves various conflicts, there’s still enough that’s stirring and original here to capture and hold the interest of adventurous indie filmgoers.
Goodbye World unfolds in Northern California, where the married James (Adrian Grenier) and Lily (Kerry Bishé) already live off the grid and in largely self-sufficient fashion, with their young daughter. Nick (Ben McKenzie), Lily’s ex-beau and James’ former business partner, and his Libertarian girlfriend, Becky (Caroline Dhavernas), are already visiting when a mysterious text message goes viral and knocks out all communications and electrical equipment, setting off a chain of panic and violence that stretches nationwide and possibly even further.
James and Lily’s home soon becomes a refuge and then a fortress for an array of estranged old friends. Included in this bunch are Laura (Gaby Hoffmann), a federal employee notorious due to leaked video evidence of an affair with a married senator; Lev (Scott Mescudi), a tech-savvy, private contractor hacker teetering on the edge of suicide just prior to the attack; Benji (Mark Webber), an activist recently released from a multi-year prison stint for eco-vandalism; and Benji’s freshly acquired carnal acquaintance, Ariel (Remy Nozik), an impressionable college student who seems to regard the potential collapse of civilization as an aphrodisiac and righteous culling. Wine, weed and conversation ensue, as this group tries to both navigate the minefield of its shared past and deal with interlopers.
Co-writers Hennelly and Sarah Adina Smith have a keen grasp of how to both communicate spreading disaster with economy and seed their dialogue with telling character shorthand. They also have a smart sense of how a disaster of the sort at the center of Goodbye World would most likely play out for a certain twentysomething subset—with much less panic and shouting than the average Hollywood offering, and a sort of inward-facing shrug. The pair’s well-grounded characterizations and clever, gender-equal give-and-take patter create any number of memorable moments, from sing-song “mathlete” in-jokes to a scene where several of the girls get high in a hot tub and pontificate about pubic shaving.