Zac Hobson (Bruno Lawrence) wakes up from his motel room to find that everyone in the world (well, at least his part of Australia) has disappeared. He explores the area, seeing cars off the road and airplanes crashed into buildings. He eventually makes his way to his place of employment, a scientific organization that was working on a project called "Flashlight". He finds one dead body there, a guy who was fried at some controls. And he very much suspects that this experiment had something to do with everyone vanishing. At first he leaves pre-recorded messages on the radio, then paints signs to his location, then, after that doesn't work, begins heavily drinking. At one point he stumbles around the city in a woman's nightgown, shouting to the emptiness. Eventually he comes across another human, a woman named Joanne. They are relieved to find each other. Then, another man, Api, appears. Zac comes up with an idea to put everything back to normal, which involves blowing up the facility-but Joanne and Api hook up, which changes things...
I think this was one of the very first Australian films I saw-and I loved this movie when it came out, mostly because it was so strange and different. Now, over thirty-years later, the film does still hold up but I've seen literally hundreds of similar themed movies in the past three decades, which made this seem rather simplistic and overdone. But it was one of the first! It's also one of those films that has an ending that makes the overall movie better-and that still has the same impact. Recommended.
Zac Hobson (Bruno Lawrence) wakes up from his motel room to find that everyone in the world (well, at least his part of Australia) has disappeared. He explores the area, seeing cars off the road and airplanes crashed into buildings. He eventually makes his way to his place of employment, a scientific organization that was working on a project called "Flashlight". He finds one dead body there, a guy who was fried at some controls. And he very much suspects that this experiment had something to do with everyone vanishing. At first he leaves pre-recorded messages on the radio, then paints signs to his location, then, after that doesn't work, begins heavily drinking. At one point he stumbles around the city in a woman's nightgown, shouting to the emptiness. Eventually he comes across another human, a woman named Joanne. They are relieved to find each other. Then, another man, Api, appears. Zac comes up with an idea to put everything back to normal, which involves blowing up the facility-but Joanne and Api hook up, which changes things...
