One morning, a father wakes up with one thought in his head: that tonight, he will murder his wife, his three children, and finally himself. After loading a rifle and storing it in his closet for the evening, he walks over to his wife's bedroom (yes, a separate bedroom) where he dispassionately grinds and moans until he's finished. Thus, the last day on Earth begins for Paul Steward, editor of a semi-successful science magazine, who seems so determined with fulfilling his awful plan that he's collected news articles about other stories of fathers wiping out their families and mentions them to colleagues as a sort of research interest. Suffice to say, this is a very dark film. Pitch black even as Steward is among the more nihilistic characters committed to celluloid. At one point, he's discussing the Holocaust with a survivor and actually manages to make a tenuous comparison between the camps and domestic life. It's that kind of almost ridiculously bleak dialogue that can at times border on the parodic and for some people will make the whole film come across as too despondent for its own good. But there are plenty of good gut punches in here, great moments where we observe a man's mindset as he rationalizes that this plan isn't so much born out of hatred but a strange sense of protection. His wife, played by Louise Fletcher, has a history of institutionalization and has attempted suicide in the past; his children who we meet briefly are written off as doomed to fail; and his career gives him no great passion. It's an early entry in an incoming wave of art by its generation reflecting on the great meaninglessness of their lives and it's certainly one of the stronger examples of this kind of masculine defeatism. Be aware of what you're getting into with this and you'll enjoy a shockingly cold and misanthropic story of familicide with a great central performance from Halbrook, all from the director of checks notes Revenge of the Nerds.
One morning, a father wakes up with one thought in his head: that tonight, he will murder his wife, his three children, and finally himself. After loading a rifle and storing it in his closet for the evening, he walks over to his wife's bedroom (yes, a separate bedroom) where he dispassionately grinds and moans until he's finished. Thus, the last day on Earth begins for Paul Steward, editor of a semi-successful science magazine, who seems so determined with fulfilling his awful plan that he's collected news articles about other stories of fathers wiping out their families and mentions them to colleagues as a sort of research interest. Suffice to say, this is a very dark film. Pitch black even as Steward is among the more nihilistic characters committed to celluloid. At one point, he's discussing the Holocaust with a survivor and actually manages to make a tenuous comparison between the camps and domestic life. It's that kind of almost ridiculously bleak dialogue that can at times border on the parodic and for some people will make the whole film come across as too despondent for its own good. But there are plenty of good gut punches in here, great moments where we observe a man's mindset as he rationalizes that this plan isn't so much born out of hatred but a strange sense of protection. His wife, played by Louise Fletcher, has a history of institutionalization and has attempted suicide in the past; his children who we meet briefly are written off as doomed to fail; and his career gives him no great passion. It's an early entry in an incoming wave of art by its generation reflecting on the great meaninglessness of their lives and it's certainly one of the stronger examples of this kind of masculine defeatism. Be aware of what you're getting into with this and you'll enjoy a shockingly cold and misanthropic story of familicide with a great central performance from Halbrook, all from the director of checks notes Revenge of the Nerds.
